gala_apples

Title: And if I Had A Hundred Sandwiches
Pairings: Frank/Gerard, past Gerard/others
Rating: pg
Wordcount: 2233
Summary: Frank's not sick, not to begin with. He's just someone that enjoys petty revenge, until he gets one-uped, hard.
Prompt used: In the future the newest pandemic is alien possession. A lengthy quarantine process is introduced for any potential "carriers" visiting Earth. Frank winds up in quarantine, where he meets this guy.
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.


What it boils down to is this is all Frank’s mom’s fault. She’s so awesome that Frank used a week’s worth of travelling points to transport home for the weekend. He’s going to have to get up three hours earlier to walk to work for the next five shifts. It’s that or request double shifts, but a three hour walk after a sixteen hour shift might just kill him. It’s worth it though, to see her and the rest of the family.

The time flies by like nothing, and much sooner than he wants to Frank finds himself having to head to the transport building, duffel slung over his shoulder. The scanning line is insanely long, of course. It doesn’t matter if any trip between the Inner Fifty is guaranteed to take less than a minute -Travel the Fifty in Fifty Nine, a phrase so obvious it had to become a patented slogan- when there's a single transit building per major city, and every citizen has to go through the scanner each trip.

When it becomes obvious it’s going to be a matter of hours, not minutes, he dumps the bag on the floor before it wears a permanent groove into his shoulder. He raids it periodically, first for headphones, then a book. Finally, as he’s a few away from the front of the line Frank pulls out a sandwich. His grandpa makes the best sandwiches in the history of the universe. Both slices of bread are an inch thick, the tomatoes are marinated, the meat substitute is hearty. Every bite is followed by a moan. It’s nearly pornographic but he doesn’t care.

It’s his turn before he’s done the sandwich. The woman looks at him pointedly. He grins around full cheeks and takes his last bite. They’ve made him wait nearly two hours, she can wait two minutes. Or he can answer the ‘where did you go, for what purpose’ questions the multiplanetary transit monitors ask with his mouth full. Whatever.

He’s about halfway through the normal checklist of questions when she interrupts him. “We suspect you’re carrying a parasite Mr Iero. How would you like to proceed?”

“You mean I have a choice?” From what Frank knows of the transit police, it doesn’t seem likely.

“Of course, Mr Iero! We at the cosmic border do our best at all times to serve and assist citizens.”

Frank finds that highly unlikely, and can’t help but judge her for pronouncing his name wrong. And the friendly customer service smile looks chock-full of petty vengeance. He crosses his arms, still greasy hands tucked tightly under his armpits. “So, what are my choices then?”

“You can pay a nominal fee for an instant scan, or a slightly higher fee for a reading and inoculations.”

Frank’s not naive, he knows what ‘nominal fee’ means. But he asks anyway, hoping it’s something he can manage. It's not even close to something he can manage. “And if me and my parasite don’t have money? Are we free to go?”

“Is that your choice?”

Frank doesn’t understand how being lower middle class instead of filthy rich is a choice, but you don’t throw fits in the transport office. “Yeah.”

“So we’ll do your tests, and put you in quarantine while we wait. How does that sound?”

It sounds motherfucking shitty is how it sounds.

*

Frank knows a dungeon when he sees one. Even if it has padded walls instead of cobblestone, and there isn’t a rack in sight, it’s still a dungeon. The room is a windowless basement, lit only enough to make you realise how dark it is. The blocks of fabric that cover every surface are a shade of grey that looks like it easily swallows bloodstains. And it reeks, not just of sweat and puke and too much industrial cleaner, but of intangible things like despair and death.

And it’s a dungeon that he’s sharing, nonetheless. The other person is in one of the corners of the room that faces the door. He’s stomach down, face resting on his arms. Frank’s sure he’s asleep. No one pretending to snore that would do it that obnoxiously.

There’s no handle on the door, of course, so Frank doesn’t spend much time struggling to escape. Once he gives up he crosses the room, floor compressing under him with each step. He sits in the opposite corner from the stranger. If they ever do open the door he wants to be able to charge it. Knock the fuckers out.

It’s maybe a bit creepy to stare at the sleeping man, but frankly he’s the only thing to look at. Frank can’t see any of his features, not with the way his head is nestled against his arm, but his hair is interesting. It’s almost a celtic knot of tangles. He wonders for a second how long it’s been since he’s had access to a mirror or a comb, but cuts off the line of thought before it can drive deep. The less he thinks about how long he’ll be a prisoner, the better.

When he finally wakes up, he introduces himself as Gerard. It’s startling after who knows how long of silence. Then he sits, drawing his legs under him. He’s still turned away, but now that gravity is working with the mess of hair, Frank can see it’s shoulder length. It’s one of the things he likes in a man.

“So, how do we-” Frank cuts off. It’s stupid to ask when he can just look up at the camera. It’s not visible, but there must be one. “I need to piss, come open the door.”

Gerard shakes his head. “No one’s coming.”

“Then how-”

“I’ve dubbed that the fluids corner,” Gerard answers, pointing. Nothing looks discoloured but Frank can’t tell for sure. Gerard doesn’t read as a liar though.

It’s a bad first impression, he knows. Embarrassing too. Normally when he pees in public he’s drunk enough that he doesn’t really have the coherence to think about how it’s weird. Tough shit for him that they don’t serve pitchers of beer in dungeons.

“They didn’t even tell me what kind of alien they thought latched on,” he says, later, after he’s done turning away his face so Gerard can’t see him blushing. “I think she just called it because I pissed her off.”

“Were you doing anything besides standing there?”

“Nothing that screams I have an alien possessing me!”

“How’d you piss her off?” Frank doesn’t know this man well enough to know if he’s hearing scorn, but he doesn’t think so. Gerard sounds genuinely curious.

“I was standing, eating a sandwich when it was my turn. It’s not like I was gonna toss the last bite. My grandpa made it.”

“There you go,” he replies with a flourish of his arm.

“What?”

“You probably got flagged for uncontrollable eating. There are a few that cause that.”

“How do you know?”

“I could tell you it’s my attitude, I’m just too sassy for them to think I’m all human. But really? I’m a known carrier. Nine times out of ten, something latches on.”

“Why do you keep using transit then?” If Frank was a carrier he’d walk to work no matter how long it took. Well, he’d probably get an apartment across the street from the orange plant so it wouldn’t take any time at all. But he wouldn’t do this.

“My mom and dad and grandma are on this planet, but me and my brother work on Oinia. I just factor in three quarantine days on either side of any vacation. Sometimes it’s more, but most parasites get flushed one way or another by then.”

“You couldn’t just get a reading?”

“Where’s the sense of adventure?”

*

“I’m so fucking hungry. When are they going to drop dinner off? Or breakfast, it must be breakfast by now.”

He’s not just hungry. He’s cold too. With no air circulation, his clothes are still damp from the water that sprayed from the ceiling a while ago. Not that Frank was worrying about getting wet at the time. His mouth had been so dry that it was like tissue coating his tongue. Being able to tilt his head up and drink had been a huge relief. But he’s thirsty again and there’s no telling when they water will fall next, and he’s tired and cold and hungry. But he’ll complain about one thing at a time, for Gerard’s sake.

“They won’t.”

They’ve talked most of the night; about music, and Mikey and Grandpa, and what things might have been like before the astronauts fucked things up and explored beyond Earth and brought a pile of shit down on everyone. Between them they've few short naps, but it’s hard to know when to sleep when the lighting never changes and you can't follow normal pre-bed routines. So far Gerard’s opinions have been pretty solid. So he asks “why not?”

“They think it’s a Grbax, remember? If you don’t eat for seventy two hours it’ll be so ravenous it’ll detach and attack the nearest hunk of food. You watch. In two days they’ll come in with a bowl of oatmeal.”

“Nothing will detach, I’m not sick.”

“They’re transit police, they don’t care what you think you know about your body.”

*

“It’s not like I haven’t thought about getting a reading. In a perfect world, you know?”

Frank knows. In a perfect world he wouldn't be here. He'd be at home, eating something. A five course meal, maybe.

“A reading is more than I’d make in a year. Mikey always feels guilty, he tells me I’d do better working in a company on a planet that has a transit health plan. But I could never abandon him.”

Frank doesn’t have anyone he loves too much to leave. It sounds nice. Stressful, to have that level of responsibility, but nice.

“It shouldn’t cost anyone anything. The Sppps is only in you for five minutes. They like finding matches in the universe, it’s part of their religion. They want to inform people what aliens are attracted. It’s the government that’s charging for it! It’s seriously fucked up.”

He’s nodding along to Gerard’s words, but he’s mostly watching his lips. Gerard’s got a nice mouth.

*

“So what do you do for three days here? Like, when they flag you because you’re you, but you’re not actually sick?” Frank doesn’t know if he’s ready to hear about being infected with an alien.

“You want the truth, or what I tell the extended family when they ask?”

“Truth, obviously.” He’s not exactly a blusher. Besides, the truth will hopefully take a while to tell, and Gerard talks loudly and emphatically, loud enough that Frank almost can’t hear his stomach growling.

“I jerk off a lot. Enough that one time they made me stay longer because they thought there might be some kind of lust alien they hadn’t discovered yet.”

‘You haven’t jerked off at all.” Frank wouldn’t blame him for it. He’s go his own jerking off before sleeping ritual, it’s oddly significantly harder trying to sleep without doing it.

“Because when there’s someone else in the cell I tend to have sex with them instead.”

“What, with all of them?” If Gerard’s been telling the truth about how often the transit police catch him, it’s a good number of people.

“I don’t care about gender or looks or age. Sex is all about understanding someone else, even just for a minute. That’s pretty easily accomplished here, when the situation is the same for everyone in the room.”

“You haven’t asked me yet.”

“You seem like the kind of guy that likes to make the first move. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll fuck by the time they let us out.”

Frank considers it probably less than ten minutes. Not that there’s a clock on the grey walls to be certain. It’s not just that Gerard’s sexy, and now that Frank knows he’s interested there’s no barrier between them. Outside of this dungeon that might be his primary reason. Here he just wants twenty minutes of distraction. Maybe if they have vigorous enough sex he’ll even pass out and he can sleep through a few hours of starving.

“Do you want to actually fuck, or do you want a handjob or something?”

“Whatever you want to try, I’ll try.”

A handjob won’t make him tired. “I want you to fuck me. Get your fingers really wet first.”

It’s weird, being full when his entire body feels empty and aching. It’s hard to hold himself up on hands and knees, his limbs are shaking. Gerard is steady behind him, except for rhythmic thrusts, a sign he’s been conditioned to the experience of the transit dungeons. It takes longer to get into it than it should, considering how hot he is. Every time Gerard strokes too hard and bumps his stomach it draws his attention. He’s not sure why he’s groaning, there’s no point where the scale tips definitively from hunger to arousal.

Thank fuck it works. Whatever biological reflex makes it happen still works ten stories underground; when he comes he’s sated, however briefly. He’s heavy and his eyelids are drooping, and he’s going to use that before it disappears. Frank doesn’t have anything to clean up with, and doesn’t want to wake himself up by getting concerned about it, so he just rolls over and props his head on his arm. Gerard curls up behind him. Frank’s not expecting it, but it’s nice.