Archive of Our Own

It’s the humidity that I'll get you, or whatever the locals from Louisiana said. And of course they were right, the heat was intense and the sun had agreed that its personal mission was to reduce everything and everyone into a puddle.

The band had already finished their show for the day, it was one of those slow days where for some reason they were scheduled to play at three pm, finishing just short of the summer sun starting to die out a bit. Not here, in the middle of a city in between the Pontchartrain and the Mississippi, every breath came into their lungs sticky and thick like cold medicine and sweating did nothing to fight it away.

Backstage, Ray was already getting frustrated, the red on his face could have been from the post show adrenaline, or the heat, or the anger that the third hair tie had already given up and betrayed him, leaving another small red mark around his fingers from where it snapped.

"Fuck off!!" Ray yelled, launching the remains of the elastic into the nearest wall and sitting down on an abandoned pile of guitar cases.

Frank watches with a giggle, letting a cool towel perch on the back of his neck, he shakes his head for a moment before muttering, mostly to himself. "Your hair is too thick, it wasn't going to work"

Ray looked up, left eyebrow raised. "Since when do you know anything about hair?"

"Sister." Frank turns another page.

"I’ve watched you burn your own scalp off with box bleach."

Frank shrugged. "You’re better off braiding it than trying to put it in a pony" he chirps as he reads an abandoned magazine and an article about a new pedal board. "Just sayin’"

Ray almost laughs despite himself. "And you know how to braid?"

"Kinda" Frank answered, closing the magazine. "I can do a three-strand. Maybe Dutch? Or French? I always mix those up."

Ray gets up onto his feet, walking with the annoyance of someone who has been slowly cooking under their own hair for hours. He drops down onto the floor in front of Frank’s knees and holds the brush up behind him without turning around. "Alright then."

Frank pauses his reading for a moment, lowering the magazine, then looks at the brush. "What?"

"Do it." The brush handle wiggles. "Before I do something drastic."

Frank takes it. "Define drastic."

"Bald."

"Someone hide the clippers" Frank warns theatrically to the empty room and takes a handful of Ray’s curls, slowly separating them with his fingers.

It takes almost an hour. Frank works through it section by section, tugging out knots that had been collecting sweat all afternoon, Ray hissing through his teeth every few minutes. He finished with a little flourish, tying off the second braid with a mismatched blue elastic he’d found in the depths of his jeans pocket. "Done."

Ray tentatively touched his head. "Holy shit."

Frank watched as Ray scrambled for a mirror, settling on an abandoned compact and dedicating the next five seconds to try and get enough of a reflection to see the two very crooked but stable braids.

"Not bad," Ray admitted, stretching the base of one braid and watching it spring back into place. He tilted the compact, squinting into it. "Ever considered beauty school?"

Frank had already flipped the magazine back open. "Back up plan" he said, to the page.

The door bangs open against the wall, startling everyone. Gerard is mid-sip on his Gatorade, the red kind, and he chokes on it a little when he sees Ray and sends a fine mist across the air. He stands there in the doorway with the bottle halfway to his mouth, eyes moving slowly from the braids to Frank to the braids again. His face goes completely still for one long second, and then a sharp, raw wheeze escapes him.

His laugh starts somewhere in his stomach and takes his knees with it on the way out, making him double over, one hand slapping against his thigh.

Ray is immediately offended. "Fuck off! I look beautiful!"

Gerard can’t breathe around the laughter. "I know!–" Another wheezing gasp cuts him off. "That’s the fucking problem!"

The magazine leaves Frank’s hands in a perfect spiral, pages fluttering like a wounded bird as it sails toward Gerard’s head. Gerard is still losing his shit, stumbling forward with grubby hands outstretched like he needs to touch the braids to believe they’re real.

"They’re practical!" Frank yells over Gerard’s wheezing, voice cracking with pride.

Ray nods solemnly even if a faint smile plays on his lips as Gerard takes one handful of his hair and inspects it like it might reveal the secrets of the universe. "They’re cooling."

Gerard has to sit on a guitar case because he's laughing too hard. Frank watched Ray trying to put on a serious face, but the edges cracked. Mikey tiptoed in, glancing up with a furrowed brow.

"What’s the emergency?" Mikey squinted.

"My hair," Ray said. "Frank’s a genius."

Mikey looked at the braids, then at Ray’s face, then shrugged. "Looks like you’re about to row a Viking ship, but, like, in the best way," he mumbled.

Hours later, the bus hums down a long flat stretch of highway, the AC is on , but it’s losing the argument. Everyone is draped somewhere with their shoes off, heads back. Gerard is sprawled across the narrow couch with one arm over his eyes, the other hand drifting up every few minutes to peel a strand of black hair off the back of his neck and drop it again.

Frank is across from him, half-watching and half-playing on his phone. He’s counted four times now. "...still hot?"

Gerard doesn't even open his eyes. "I'm always hot." He punctuates it with a lazy finger gun and what is supposed to be a wink.

Frank looks him up and down for a second. "... Yeah."

Nobody says anything for a second, just letting the words hang in there awkwardly like an abandoned piñata.

Frank watched him lose another battle with a stubborn strand glued to the back of his neck. Gerard made an increasingly dramatic face every time he peeled it away, only for it to flop right back into place a few seconds later.

"Okay, so," Gerard starts talking, letting a strand of his hair roll in between his fingers. "Four inches. Braid. Stupid or not stupid?"

Frank squints at the nest of black hair. "I mean... kinda? It’ll look nothing like Ray’s either way"

"Ray looks like a milkmaid"

From somewhere in the bunks, Ray, who was supposedly taking a nap, yelps. "My hair looks incredible!"

"Traitor." Gerard muttered.

Frank doesn’t have much time to object when Gerard is suddenly in between his legs, sitting on the floor with his back turned.

"Are you serious right now?" Frank asked, incredulous, as Gerard planted himself cross-legged on the sticky bus floor, wedged between Frank’s legs like a toddler waiting for story time. Gerard simply tilted his head back and fanned his fingers slowly through his own hair, spreading it out into a limp, matted curtain.

"No," Frank said, more loudly, jabbing a finger somewhere near the crown of Gerard’s head. "You literally made fun of Ray for twenty minutes."

Gerard gave a helpless little shrug. "Yeah, when I wasn't contemplating buzzing my own head"

Frank rolled his eyes, but he could feel his cheeks flush, just a little bit. "Okay, fine, but you can’t make fun of me if it sucks. Or if I suck. Or if your head is shaped weird." He tried to focus on the way Gerard's hair was already tangling in his knuckles. "This isn’t Iero’s Salon"

He let out a huff, but found himself methodically combing his fingers through the top layer, detangling the worst of the knots. It was softer than he expected, even after a week of shows and a thick layer of hairspray. He wasn’t sure what Gerard washed it with, or if he did at all, but the strands resisted and gave in with a weird kind of loyalty.

"You know," Frank said, after a minute, "most people would, like, ask nicely if they wanted a favor. Not just drop on the floor and hope for the best."

"But that’s how you know we’re friends," Gerard countered. He tilted his head a little, letting Frank access the back of his neck. "Also, there’s a non-zero chance my head is gonna explode if you don’t do something soon."

Frank snorted. He separated a section, then another, trying to recall the endless hours when his sister forced him to learn the difference between a waterfall braid and a fishtail one. Gerard’s hair was weird, way too short for a three-strand, and the sections refused to stay in place as he tried to wrangle them into the starting point of a French braid. "How long has it been since you even did your hair?"

Gerard’s voice was unexpectedly quiet, almost sheepish. "I haven’t had my hair braided in forever."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Gerard shrugs as much as Frank’s grip on his hair allows. "Last time was at summer camp. I was, like, thirteen."

Frank’s hands still completely, discovering the unexpectedly soft layers of hair hiding behind the knots, he lets his fingers glide along with it for just a second. "You went to camp?"

"Shut up." Gerard’s voice comes out defensive.

"I just–" Frank chokes back a faint, disbelieving laugh. "I’m trying to picture it."

"I know how it sounds." Gerard mutters, bringing his knees up to his chest.

"You? In the woods?"

"My mom thought I needed to socialize." Gerard’s shoulders tense slightly under Frank’s touch.

He gets a hold of the new section from under his ear, managing it into the braid with his thumb. "Well. Did it work?"

"…No."

"Thought so" Frank starts separating another small section of hair, the humid air making the strands cling to his fingers. "So?"

"So what?"

"The braids."

"Oh, yeah." Gerard scratched absently at a bug bite on his knee, the red welt standing out against his pale skin. "There was this girl." Frank made a low sound in his throat, something between a hum and a laugh that vibrated through where his knees bracketed Gerard's shoulders.

"And she kept doing my hair," Gerard continued, his voice taking on a distant kind of quality as he stared at the grimy floorboards.

"For fun?" Frank asks, fingers still working through the dark strands, separating a new section near Gerard's temple.

"I guess." Gerard's shoulders lifted in a half-shrug. "Like... every afternoon after swim time. We'd sit on the cabin steps while everyone else was playing capture the flag."

Frank snorted softly. "Dude."

"What?"

"She liked you." The words came out flat, certain.

Gerard laughed immediately, a sharp burst of air. "No she didn't."

"Come on."

"No." Gerard shook his head slightly, making Frank's grip tighten and then give up.

Frank undid the two twists he already did, ruffled the sections loose and started again. "Every day?" His voice dropped, taking on a tone he used when he knew he was right. "Same girl? All summer?"

"She was just being nice." Gerard picked at a loose thread on the hem of his shorts. "Her name was Chloe. She had these... I don't know, she was shorter than me, and she played flute or something like that, she was interesting"

"Nobody spends an entire summer braiding some dude's hair because they're nice," Frank said, his thumbs brushing against Gerard's scalp as he worked another section into the braid.

"They do at camp." Gerard's voice went small, defensive.

"They do not." Frank gave the section of hair a short, decisive pull. "Stop moving. I've almost got it."

Something finally clicked into place under his fingers, there was a clean anchor point at Gerard's temple, the French braid taking its first real hold. The strands that had been fighting him all conversation suddenly had somewhere to be. Frank squinted at it, then at the other side of Gerard's head. Two of them, maybe, meeting somewhere in the back.

He chewed the inside of his cheek. It was more than ambitious. Then his eyes found the window, looking at the flat nothing of highway scrolling past. Six hours to go, and he had nothing better left to do.

Frank let out a low breath. "Okay."

Gerard tilted his head back against Frank's knees, the movement making his grip tighten reflexively. "Okay what?"

"I can do this," Frank said, his voice dropping to a murmur as he began separating a new section near Gerard's temple.

"That sounds like a threat" Gerard mumbled, his eyes drifting shut again.

"I'm making a crown." Frank separated a new section, his fingernails scraping lightly against Gerard's skin.

"A what?".

"Don't move." Frank pressed a palm flat on top of Gerard’s head, holding him still.

"Frank–"

"You wanted it out of your face." His voice tightened as he caught a stubborn knot with his pinky.

"...I did, but–" Gerard admitted quietly, settling back against Frank’s legs.

"Then shut up!" Frank snapped, but there was no heat in it, just concentration, and the faintest hint of a smile Gerard couldn’t see.

Frank worked in silence for a while, his fingers moved with a carefulness that made the strands click and whip against each other like static. There was a rhythm to it, almost hypnotic, and Gerard was lulled into a weird and calm obedience by the gentle tugging along his scalp. He could hear the hush of the tires against asphalt, the dry dying rattle of the air conditioner, and every so often, in between, a low muttered curse from Frank as he found a new, hidden tangle.

It wasn’t until Frank had nearly finished the first section, the braid curving neatly, that he spoke again. "I still think she liked you, by the way."

Gerard sighed like a tired dog. "She didn’t"

His hands paused for a second, thumbs pressed against Gerard’s skull. "Every day for an entire summer? Come on."

"She was bored," Gerard said, voice flat and unamused, but Frank could feel the way his back stiffened just slightly under his hands.

Frank snorted. "She could’ve played cards."

"Maybe she didn’t like cards."

"You said the others were playing capture the flag. She had options."

"Not really," Gerard muttered. He rolled his eyes at the grimy floor, even though Frank couldn’t see it, and picked at an old scab on his ankle.

Frank kept braiding. "So she picked you. And your hair."

Gerard’s head listed to one side, letting Frank get at the new section near his neck. "I was weird. She thought it was funny."

Frank’s hands stopped again. This time, the pause lingered longer, like he was weighing whether to say something or not. "Maybe she just thought you were cute"

Gerard laughed, a short dry sound, and let his head tip back against Frank’s knees. "You’re weirdly invested in this."

"I’m just saying."

"You’re saying she had a crush on me because she braided my hair."

"Yes"

"Then why are you braiding my hair?"

Outside, a flat stretch of highway median rolled past, identical to the last hundred miles of it. The bus hit a shallow dip in the road. Frank’s hands went still against Gerard’s scalp, and for a moment there was nothing but the hiss of tires and the rattling death of the air conditioner. He shook his head and tugged hard on the last strand. "Because you fucking asked me to."

"Exactly."

"That’s different." Frank’s thumb pressed into the base of the braid, holding the tension.

"How?"

"Because–" Frank’s voice came out sharper than he meant it to. His fingers found the end of the braid and held it, pressing the tail flat against Gerard’s neck while he patted his own pockets with his free hand. "She liked you. Big difference."

"You sound jealous."

"I’m not." Frank’s knee pressed harder into Gerard’s shoulder as he leaned to check the seat beside him. "Turn your head."

Gerard laughed, a low sound that moved through his whole back. "What?"

"Turn your head."

"Why?"

"Because I’m making the other one." Frank found a hair tie around his own wrist and worked it off with his teeth.

Gerard’s shoulders rose and fell once, very slowly, the braid shifting against his neck. "...You are jealous."

Outside, the highway median scrolled past, flat and featureless and identical to the past hundred miles of it. Frank pressed his thumb hard into the base of the finished braid and kept it there, and just to top of the cake, the damn hairband snapped and broke on his fingers. "Turn your fucking head"

Gerard eventually obeyed, grumbling, and Frank pressed the tail of the finished braid into his hand without a word. Gerard held it between two fingers like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. The end of it kept slipping.

"So what else happened at camp?" Frank said, starting the second braid, this time it was easier.

Gerard shrugged, which earned him a sharp tap on the shoulder. "Nothing. I was weird."

"You’ve mentioned."

"I sucked at sports. Couldn’t throw a ball without it going sideways. Fell out of a canoe–"

"You fell out of a canoe?"

Gerard looked down at the floor of the bus, where it looked like someone had ground a pretzel into the rubber matting sometime in the last decade. "It tipped over."

"Because of you?"

"...Mostly."

Frank snorted, his fingers working a new section apart near the temple. "Jesus Christ."

"I just wasn’t exactly popular," he muttered, a little sharper than intended.

"Yeah, I gathered," Frank replied. There was no sting in it, only a soft, matter-of-fact delivery, as if the information had been stamped on Gerard’s forehead and Frank was only now getting around to reading it. Frank’s hand brushed against his, and Gerard pulled away reflexively, then forced himself to relax. It was so stupid, he had asked for this, and now he was being weird about it. This, he supposed, was why nobody let him play Dungeons and Dragons at summer camp.

Gerard ducked his chin. "Nobody wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons with me," he said, not quite sure why he was volunteering this particular self-own. It just came out.

"You played D&D at summer camp?" Frank sounded honestly impressed.

"There was a group!" Gerard said quickly, eager to clarify that he was not, in fact, the lone weirdo in the woods rolling dice at mosquitoes.

"And they wouldn't let you play?"

"They didn't say I couldn't. They just–" Gerard shrugged. "They already had a party."

"So?"

"So, I was weird." Gerard waited for Frank’s inevitable comeback, but instead Frank just kept working, silent.

"You keep saying that like it's an explanation."

"I didn't have the right books, anyway."

Frank raised an eyebrow, genuinely confused. "You need books for that shit?"

"Obviously." Gerard rolled his eyes, then realized Frank still couldn’t see his face.

"Couldn't you just make stuff up?"

"That's not how it works."

Frank didn’t push it, just kept splitting the hair into equal sections. "Last time you explained it to me, it sounded like that’s exactly how it works."

"You don't know anything about D&D."

The braid was already halfway finished, and there was a hush in the bus now, just that awful air conditioner, maybe. Gerard’s ribs ached from the memory more than the present, but he could tell Frank was focusing, because his hands were getting faster.

Frank shrugged "I know enough to know thirteen-year-old you should've been allowed to play."

Gerard laughed under his breath. "You would've played with me?"

Frank grinned, as if it was the dumbest question he’d ever heard, and didn’t look up from his work. "Yeah."

"Even if I was weird?"

Frank finally looked down, his gaze landing on the top of Gerard’s head, where the part in his dark hair was slightly crooked. "You are weird."

A small, reluctant smile touched Gerard’s mouth. "Yeah."

"So?" Frank asked, voice casual as his fingers kept working, the braid was almost done, his hands infuriatingly crashing against the one Gerard kept in place, holding the first braid. "Not a bad thing. Still weird now. Still steal my veggie pizza and leave the crust like some kind of animal."

"Hey–" Gerard protested, but Frank beat him to it.

Frank tugged lightly on a strand. "That’s just you."

"You’re very bossy for someone braiding my hair."

"And you’re very mouthy," Frank said, giving a gentle but firm press against the base of Gerard’s skull with his thumb, "for a guy whose head is in my hands."

There was another moment of silence as Frank finished the second braid. The end result wasn’t half bad; in fact, it looked almost planned, the lines of the two braids running clean and tight along the sides of Gerard’s head before meeting somewhere at the back like a weird, lopsided crown. Of course, Frank was also aware that the only reason the sections held together at all was the state of Gerard’s hair, still shellacked with several layers of sweat, dry shampoo, and whatever the hell that cheap hair spray was supposed to do. But he chose to not think about it.

"There," Frank said, giving the last section a gentle pat.

Gerard waited exactly two seconds. "Is it actually done?"

"Yeah."

"Does it look stupid?" said Gerard, already trying to angle his face to catch his reflection in the scratched-up window.

Frank let his voice go dry. "Probably."

Gerard immediately reached up to his scalp, fingers fumbling for the shape of the braid.

Frank caught him by the wrist, quick as a reflex. "Don’t– I haven’t tied it off yet–"

"I just want to see," Gerard said, straining his arm up like a drowning man reaching for the surface.

"You’ll ruin it!" Frank grumbled, not letting go.

"I just wanna look!" Gerard protested, his voice pitching up into an embarrassing whine.

Frank dug a hand into his pocket, searching for a second hair tie. "Using your hands?!"

He found a purple rubber band, caked with lint, and used it to cinch off the tail of the second braid, he used his hands to smooth a few stray strands that still decided to rebel with frizz as he tied off both braids into the elastic. "There, dumbass"

Gerard twisted around fast enough that Frank had to yank his hands back. He got his knees up onto the vinyl cushion, right up against Frank’s thigh, and leaned toward the window with his whole upper body, tilting his chin up and then sideways, trying to catch his reflection. He looked a little unhinged, glancing between the window and his own distorted reflection in the glass, then at Frank, then back again. The braids, if anything, made him look more like a medieval disaster than a pop-punk icon, but he seemed oddly pleased with it.

Frank laughed, watching Gerard’s face do something in the window’s reflection that couldn’t quite decide if it was a smirk or a pout. "You look like one of those guys at Medieval Times"

Gerard didn’t look away from the window. "That's so flattering."

"I meant, like, the loser that gets stabbed first"

"Even better." Gerard reached up and pressed two fingers against the right braid, following it back along his skull to where it met the left one. "Thanks."

Frank shrugged, suddenly very interested in picking a piece of lint off his jeans. "You asked."

"Still."

"Whatever."

Gerard turned around again, looking satisfied with the hairdo. He turned away from the window. The bus rocked slightly, making the world outside lurch, and Gerard let himself slide down, knees curling beneath him as he landed back on the battered vinyl couch. It squeaked in protest. He didn’t go back to his original seat, though. Instead, he dropped sideways and let his head land, deliberately, in Frank’s lap, the crown of his freshly-braided head pressed against Frank’s thigh.

Frank flinched as if stung, his knees jerking up, his hand freezing in the act of picking at his jeans. But then, just as quickly, he uncrossed his arms and let himself settle, like this was perfectly normal.

For a full thirty seconds, neither of them said anything. Frank picked up his phone and started pawing at it, probably scrolling through messages he’d already read or opening and closing the same three apps. Gerard let his eyes drift shut for a second, just to see if Frank would move his head off, but all he got for his trouble was a knuckle bumping gently against his temple.

"…You really think Chloe liked me?" Gerard said after a moment, just after Frank had fished out his phone and begun to play what sounded like Snake.

Frank looked down, finding Gerard and his eyes lost somewhere along the ceiling of the rattling bus. "Yeah."

Gerard tilted his head back fully, looking up at him. "And what makes you so sure?"

Frank stared at him for half a second too long. "She spent all summer doing your hair."

"That's your evidence?"

"I think it's pretty compelling."

Gerard's smile widened. "Then I guess you're in trouble."

He blinked. "Why?"

"You just spent an entire afternoon doing mine." Gerard gestured vaguely at his own head.

Frank froze in place, but before he could think about another quick rebuttal, there was a chorus of ancient springs protesting, and then Ray emerged, blinking at the low ceiling. Ray’s braids had lost the plot magnificently, they had given up and become one big frizzy nest, probably from where Ray turned and tossed in his sleep.

Ray landed in the narrow aisle with a thud and the distinct jangle of a chain wallet. His t-shirt was inside-out, his jeans bunched at the knees, and he had acquired a mysterious Sharpie tattoo on his left hand at some point in the afternoon. He surveyed the scene, the two of them on the vinyl couch, Gerard’s head still in Frank’s lap, the air full of that strange static, and blinked slowly.

"What the fuck am I looking at?" he mumbled, scrubbing a palm over his face where the vinyl pattern had left red creases on his cheek.

Gerard lifted his head just enough that Frank could feel the shift of weight against his thigh. "Frank did my hair," he said, that smug little smile already curling at the corner of his mouth like he’d won something.

"I can see that."

Frank’s jaw tightened as he met Ray’s knowing look. He began shaking his head slightly like that explained anything. "He asked."

"I didn’t ask why." Ray’s gaze drifted between them, lingering on the way Frank hadn’t actually pushed Gerard off. He shook his head once, turned, and muttered toward his bunk, "You know what? I’m going back to sleep."