frerard one shots | ✔️

sixty-four ~ harcore shows

It wasn't supposed to start like this. Love at first sight wasn't supposed to happen, that was bullshit for fairy tales and people who didn't know what love was. And sure, it wasn't actually love at first sight, but looking back, at least for Gerard, it sure felt like it had been.

Frank Iero was gorgeous, astonishingly beautiful, and he liked the same music Gerard did -- he'd seen him at a few of the shows that he went to -- and it almost seemed like they weren't too different. But, Gerard knew too much about his family to even think about the fluttering wave that was sweeping over his stomach and heart the first time he saw him at one of the shows at the shitty record store.

He was fucking short, but goddamn, he was built nicely. He had a black mohawk and the shaved sides were bleached as white as his powdery skin. He wore all black, his legs swathed in jeans that were torn from jumping fences and a Misfits shirt that looked like it had belonged to his father.

Gerard walked up to him then, stood a little closer than normal so that Frank would turn to him. And when he did turn, with glowing eyes, Gerard asked his name.

"I don't think you wanna know, Way," he said.

"I could have guessed that you'd be here... Escape from the godawful family of yours? Rebelling against their distressingly abrasive ways?" Gerard mumbled into his ear again, and he pulled away, laughing.

"Fucking figures you'd say something like that," Frank said with one of his irresistible grins. "You know what that's like just as well as I do. Why else would you be here too, baby?"

Gerard inhaled sharply at the name, not expecting it to roll off his tongue so easily, so nicely, it was so nice when he said it, but he pushed the hair out of his face and smirked at the shorter boy.

"Yeah, I can't really brag about my home life, but yours? Sweetheart, I'm surprised you haven't run to the cops yet."

"I fucking hate cops. Fuck cops. They're the ones who got me into one hundred per cent of all the messes my friends get in, you know?"

"What messes are your friends in, Iero?"

"None of your business, baby," he said with a wink and touched Gerard's shoulder, and he felt a new kind of feeling boiling in his chest. "I just came here to watch a show. Isn't that what you were here for too?"

It wasn't anger that was bubbling in Gerard's chest, but it wasn't hatred either. It felt like hatred at first, but then it almost seemed like it was something deeper, something more sultry and romantic, something lovely. It was all muddled with hatred and a need for more interaction with him.

He grinned as the lights dimmed a little bit. "Start a pit with me then? You're right. We're not at a hardcore show for nothing."

"That's more like it. I knew there was some good in you, Way," Frank said with a smile that was too genuine, and there was that feeling again. The one where I couldn't help but be wildly confused about. The one where Gerard needed to know more about him, but not for a particular reason.

"ALRIGHT!" the singer shouted into the mic as his bandmates sound checked and tuned. "YOU GUYS READY TO FUCK IT UP?"

The small crowd cheered, and the whole band grinned, and when Frank caught Gerard's eye, they were both grinning too.

"RESPECT THE SPACE, RESPECT EACH OTHER, HERE WE GO! WE'RE CODE ORANGE KIDS, AND THIS ONE'S CALLED 'NOTHING (THE RAT)' LET'S FUCK THIS SHIT UP!"

---

Gerard was leant against the wall outside of the record shop smoking a cigarette when Frank came out of the venue, tucking a signed cassette tape into his beat-up leather jacket. The cigarette butt was orange, glowing almost the same colour of the dim street lights that shone cones of light onto the glimmering street below. The streets glinted with water from the rain that had pummelled down while the show was going on, and now the air was crisp, and as Gerard turned his head slowly towards Frank, his face and hair still wet with sweat and rain, sticking to his forehead.