Chapter Text
“Can you stay another hour?” Frank asks Gerard as he catches him washing his hands on his way out. And when Gerard eyes the back exit, he desperately adds, “I can pay you.”
“If you can pay, I’ll stay,” Gerard says, reaching for a wad of paper towels to dry off his hands. “What do you need me to do?”
“So, I don’t know if you saw,” Frank says, watching as Gerard tosses the paper towel into the trash can. He takes a split second to inspect Gerard. He’s only ever had a split second to check people out. It’s all he’s ever needed. Even after a full eight hours, Gerard looks energized. The caffeine, Frank suspects. He’s clearly in some sort of pain. Maybe his back. Maybe his feet. So, Frank decides that he won’t work him too hard tonight. His eyes are a little puffy and purple. Frank doesn’t suppose that Gerard sleeps much. His hair is inhumanly black, not unlike Frank’s own. L’Oréal or Revlon, Frank wonders.
He looks like a man. A grown fucking man with bills and responsibilities to other people—a wife, a young child even—but he is not. Gerard is grown, sure, but he’s green. He has no bills. He lives with his mother, he had learned from Ray. He doesn’t even have student loans to pay off. He is single, admittedly so. And yet, he is twenty-seven years old. Frank did the math. Gerard has about four and a half years on Frank, but still, Frank feels infinitely more mature than him. Frank has a steady job with years of experience behind him. He’s got an extended family with whom he has regular communication. He’s got a namesake institution to inherit and no siblings to fight with him over it. At just 22 years old, Frank has a life of his own. And here he is, bossing around a 27-year-old Gerard. A 27-year-old Gerard who looks like a man, but in reality is someone else entirely. Frank wants nothing more than to be there when Gerard figures out who that someone is.
“Saw what?” Gerard asks, pulling down the sleeves of his pink shirt.
“Oh,” Frank says, rubbing his eye. He doesn’t usually zone out this badly. “The boxes. I drove into NYC and I picked ‘em up from the manufacturer, because they forgot, like, half of this week’s delivery order. Anyway. I also picked up with little custom stamp from this company in the fashion district. It has the URL to our website, so we can just”—Frank imitates the rolling motion of a stamp—“slap that shit on there.”
“Oh, cool,” Gerard says. “Is that what we’re doing?”
Frank nods, pointing towards the dining room, where he’d laid out all of the stacks of boxes along the stage. “Yeah. I can stamp, and you can make the boxes. Or you can stamp if you just feel like sitting. It’s whatever,” Frank says, itching his eyebrow. He’d gotten it pierced a few months back, but it had rejected, and the scar was still a little itchy.
“I think I’ll fold the boxes, if that’s okay. I’d hate to fuck up the boxes with the stamp.”
“No worries,” Frank says, leading Gerard out into the dining room. Once he finds a pack of grease papers, Gerard follows Frank out. They make it to the stage where Frank takes a seat. Gerard is soon to follow, running a hand over the ground beneath them. They closed a few minutes ago. The place is empty, so Frank doesn’t make a fuss about it. “I just mopped. This place is spotless,” Frank assures as he takes the corner of the plastic wrapping and peels at it with his fingers.
“Looks like it,” Gerard says. He shifts where he sits to reach into his pack pocket. After he retrieves his keychain, he unfolds a utility knife and uses it to slash the plastic open on the side closest to him.
“I didn’t know you were packing,” Frank says with a chuckle.
Gerard grins as he tucks the knife away and helps him open up the stack of 75 boxes. He gets to work, papering and folding each box. Within a few seconds, he’s got a stack of about ten beside him.
“Look at you, getting all fast,” Frank says as he rubs the end of the rubber stamp over the inkpad.
“I haven’t figured out a way to do it without cutting the shit out of my fingers.”
“Occupational hazard.” Frank grabs the box off the top of Gerard’s stack and applies the stamp. He shows it to Gerard, proudly.
“You know, I didn’t even know we had a website.”
The fact that Gerard is already including himself in Iero’s Pizza Club warms Frank’s heart. Cheech was always saying that under Frank’s command, the shop would need to grow. It’s finally happening.
“We don’t,” Frank says. “Not yet, actually. But I bought the domain, and I’m paying this guy to develop the site for us. He’ll be done in a month, and we’ll be able to take online orders.”
“Wow!” Gerard says. “That’s so modern.”
“We’re not that traditional,” Frank defends, stamping the next three boxes that he’s got lined up in front of him.
“I didn’t mean it as a dig, I just… this place is so small and cozy. And the clientele is just so…”
“Old?” Frank offers.
“I wasn’t gonna say it, but yeah!” Gerard laughs. “Do half of the guys who sit down and eat here even own a computer?”
“No,” Frank says. “But their kids and grandkids do. They’ll be my regulars in 30 years’ time.”
“You still see yourself working here in 30 years?” Gerard asks.
Although Frank can tell that it’s a genuine question and not at all meant to be insulting, he cannot help but feel a little offended. “I know it’s lame or whatever, but this restaurant is my family’s legacy. It’s everything that my grandparents and my dad have ever wanted for me. And I guess I’ve come to realize that I want it for myself, too. I want to be in charge. To look back at something and say I did that. That was me.”
Gerard smiles up at Frank. “Well, you’re already a great manager to me,” he says. “I can only expect that in a few years’ time, you’ll make a great owner.”
“Yeah? We’ll see,” Frank says. As greatly as he can dole them out to his subordinates, he’s never been able to take a compliment. The inkpad squelches under the rubber stamp. "What about you?” he asks. “Where are you gonna be in 30 years?”
“Honestly?” Gerard asks. “No fucking clue. When I was younger—”
“What?” Frank asks when Gerard trails off.
“Nothing,” he shakes his head.
“No, you were gonna say something.”
Gerard sighs. “Well, when I was younger, fifteen or sixteen maybe, I just kinda stopped being able to picture where I would end up in the future. Part of me thought that—”
“That you wouldn’t make it to 30?” Frank suggests.
“Honestly? No. I thought—I had some personal issues, and I just… I never thought I’d make it this long. So, I threw myself into school so I might have had a chance to do something with my life. I got the 4.0. I got into this great school. Then, I get into this other great school, with an amazing PhD path. And I think everything’s going fine and that I might be able to make something of myself, to be a doctor, and I fuck it all up!”
“What did you do?” Frank asks, genuinely curious.
“I failed my defense.”
“Defense?” Frank questions.
“It’s kinda like a final exam paper. You learn all this shit, and then you form a thesis about something that you learned. You ask a question, and then you spend 200 pages explaining how you found the answer.”
“What was your question?” Frank asks.
“It was stupid,” Gerard says, shaking his head. Frank can tell that he’s hiding shame under his dismissive façade. “I don’t even remember what I wrote.”
“You don’t remember what you wrote about for 200 pages?” Frank asks.
Gerard shakes his head. “Not really! It took me six months to write, so it was so convoluted by the end. Just… bullshit! I was on dr—I developed some really bad habits while I was writing it, so I barely remember what I turned in. And my advisor was going through a lot at the time. He was addicted to pills. He was getting a divorce. His daughter stopped talking to him. It was only a matter of time before the department basically forced him into retirement, so he basically just kept passing me to get me out of his hair. So, we go through the motions, both of us too doped out of our minds to realize what shitty academics we had become, and then, it’s time for my presentation. I made an absolute ass of myself in front of everyone. I got stage fright, I guess. I was hungover. I forgot what I was going to say. I sent myself into a panic attack!”
Frank merely shakes his head, unaware of what might feel comforting to Gerard. Despite how much they get along, he’s only known him for two days.
“It was so embarrassing,” Gerard says, grinding his jaw.
“What was the main topic of your paper?” Frank finally asks. “Can you tell me that, at least?”
Gerard sighs, looking to his lap. “Joan of Arc.”
“Oh,” Frank says.
“I know, it’s stupid.”
“No!” Frank says, waving a hand out to Gerard to remedy a hurt that he didn’t even know he had caused. “I just don’t know much about her, is all. I love to read. Maybe you could lend me a copy of your paper.”
Gerard eyes Frank like he grew a second head. “You want to read my 200-page paper?”
“Yeah!” Frank says. “I know we don’t act like it, but we uneducated folk can read.”
“I didn’t mean it like tha—”
“I know!” Frank says, offering Gerard a gentle smile.
“If I can find it, I’ll lend it to you on a thumb drive.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Frank says. “I really do want to read it.”