frerard one shots | ✔️

thirty-seven ~ caught in the crossfire (part one)

this was requested by Beckylouise3000
if you have an idea you'd like to see me wrote please comment or pm me! i'm always up for anything besides gerard/frank x readers

As Frank walked out of the college building, he never expected Gerard Way to be waiting for him outside.

Gerard Way was infamous in their little community college, and well of course, in all of fucking New Jersey. His father was, or rather had been, the leader of one of the two New Jersey mafias --the Way family and the DeCavalcante family--until he'd died in a car crash. People wanted to laugh. They should have--it was a pathetic way to die for one of the most feared men in the small state, but now that Gerard Way had inherited his role, no one said anything about anything, no one laughed, and no one dared speak of it, because they knew that people were always watching, they were always listening. Especially Gerard Way.

Frank, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. He wasn't feared, no, in fact, he was the one who feared everything. Spiders, heights, snakes, you name it, he was scared of it, besides two things. One, needles--well, he used to be afraid of them, but the minute his friend Lindsey took him to the tattoo shop to be moral support for her first tattoo, he'd lost the fear almost instantaneously, getting a tattoo of his own that very same visit.

And two, Gerard Way. There was some deep-set trauma or something--neither he nor Lindsey could figure it out--that kept him from being afraid of Gerard Way. I mean, everyone in the state feared him, or it seemed like it anyway. You could even talk badly of the Way family, and you were fucked, and not in the nice way. No, you were fucked in the way where you'd be stuck in a basement full of rotting bodies until you died of starvation, or you'd find yourself with your limbs cut off so you'd bleed out.

These were all stories, of course, and the more Frank thought about them, the less he believed them. I mean, why torture people unless you wanted information? It'd just be easier to put a bullet in their brain and get on with it.

Besides, it didn't help that Frank thought Gerard was just about the most attractive man he'd ever laid eyes upon, but he kept that from Lindsey when they speculated about where his fearlessness came from, even though he had a sneaking suspicion she already knew.

So that day, when Frank Iero walked out of his last class of the day, he had no fear when he looked at Gerard Way. I mean, sure, there was death to be afraid of, but he'd never done anything to wrong Gerard Way or his family, so he just sent the brooding man a sweet smile while he waited for the light on the crosswalk to turn green.

"Frank Iero."

Frank turned to the voice, surprised to find that it was Gerard himself, and raised his eyebrows slightly, showing he was listening. "That's me."

And to his surprise, Gerard didn't say anything rude or derogatory, not like the other students. It was common knowledge that Frank was gay. He and Lindsey had started a diversity club that focused on racial and identity issues that targeted problems with homophobia, transphobia, racism and things of the sort. He got shit for it, yeah, but the college's dean loved him and his best friend, and there were always perks to being a teacher's pet, so he didn't really mind it.

He'd expected Gerard to throw a slur at him or punch him in the gut or something the leader of New Jersey's mafia would do, but instead, he gave him a slight smile.

"I really liked the little thing you and Lindsey organised last weekend in the park... the thing for the homeless LGBT people... you know?"

Frank's heart surged as the butterflies erupted in his belly. Gerard Way had smiled at him and then fucking complimented him? No fucking way! He kept his face calm, letting a small smile cross his face as he contained his joy.