One-shots

He doesn't exactly know when he started having feelings for one of his best friends. He really doesn't. Actually, he doesn't even know how he figured out that he has feelings for one of his best friends.
You see; every time Frank's hand brushes his or he says something slightly suggestive, Gerard doesn't shiver. His head doesn't start boiling. His palms don't start to sweat. Why? Because it's not just a fucking stupid teenage crush. It's way more serious than that.

Of course Gerard can't tell him. How should he? Frank has a girlfriend. A really nice, sweet, charming, pretty girlfriend who loves him more than Zeke loves Sharpay. It's horrendous. Jamia is everything he's not and that makes it so much more difficult. Don't get him wrong, he really likes Jamia – she's cute, nice, and smart and perfectly understands dirty jokes. She even makes her own. Plus, she's an anime freak [just like Gerard, mind that one] so he has someone to rant about Monochrome Factor to. But all in all – it's Jamia, the girlfriend of the guy Gerard loves, and it’s bound for him to have at least some internal resenting for her. And he hates himself for that. And the fact that she knows Gerard is gay and still wholeheartedly accepts their friendship makes Gerard hate her even more because she’s so fucking awesome and great and he totally isn’t.
In an ideal world – where Gerard isn’t absolutely sexually frustrated and completely and furiously in love with his best friend – Jamia would probably be everything he’d ever want for Frank.

But no. Because he wants Frank and that’s fucked up.

“Gee,” Ray moves the phone from his ear and nudges his side, “’Saw’ marathon at Iero’s tonight?”

“Uhm,” Gerard bites his lip, “There’s High School Musical 2 on TV at eight thirty.”

Ray sighs and looks at him with a face that says ‘mention High School Musical while I’m in the room ever again and I will decapitate your ass.” Gerard now wonders how anyone would decapitate his ass, when-

“We’ll be there at nine,” he huffs into the microphone and hangs up before Gerard can say anything else.

“But I really want to watch High School Musical,” Gerard looks at him with a sad face.

“No, you just want to- yeah, actually, you probably do want to watch High School Musical because you’re a fucking retard, but that’s not what this is about.” Ray looks at him knowingly and Gerard rolls his eyes.

“It’s not a problem for me to be close to Frank, dude,” Gerard says. And lies his ass off, because it’s a huge problem. Ray is the only one of their friends who actually knows about Gerard’s feelings for Frank – part from Mikey, of course. [Gerard refuses to call Mikey his friend because Mikey’s still Gerard’s dorky, annoying little brother he loves so much even though he’s constantly bitching about something and tweezing the pathetically small remains of his older brother’s nerves.]

Ray simply rolls his eyes, refusing to continue the conversation he knows he’d end at some point because Gerard is the most stubborn fuck on the planet. “Where’s Mikey?”

“I have no idea, I think him and Bob went somewhere to do something or whatever,” Gerard replies indifferently, chewing on his thumbnail [even though there’s not much left of it] and staring at some stupid vampire slash werewolf slash horrible love triangle crap TV show on his television screen.

“Good job taking care of him while your mom ain’t in town, doofus,” Ray flings a cushion at him, which he catches with his other hand [the one whose thumb isn’t inside his mouth] and puts behind his head.

“He’s seventeen, he can take care of himself,” Gerard absentmindedly rolls his eyes.

A few minutes and a fiddling-with-the-stupid-lock battle later, the front door of the Ways’ humble home opens and Mikey walks in, Bob following with a bag of potato chips in his hands.

“Where the fuck were you two?” Ray throws a cushion at Mikey, who scowls and throws it back onto him.

“We were out for a walk, you two were being way too boring,” Mikey answers and plops on the couch beside Gerard, squishing his feet in the process and earning an elbow in the side. “Ouch!”
Gerard doesn’t register anything, he just keeps staring at the TV wondering why the Hell does every vampire TV show have werewolves in it.

Bob sits in one of the armchairs, keeping quiet and eating the goddamn chips, listening to Mikey and Ray arguing about something absolutely and utterly unimportant for the human race and staring into space. Bob is a quiet guy, you would think. It’s more of a selective mutism thing; he always yells swear words at Frank when he’s jumping over him or something.

Nine o’clock comes by quickly, Gerard reluctantly ungluing himself from Troy and Gabriella overly cheerfully singing in the kitchen about how they’ve got to ‘work, work, to work this out, they’ll make things right and the sun will shine, if they work, work, there’ll be no doubt, they can still save the summer if they work this out’. He says his last goodbyes to Ryan Evans [who he totally doesn’t have a crush on], almost cries at the last sight of Chad’s amazing fro before joining Ray’s and flopping out of the house in a pouting-goose manner. Mikey is watching him and Ray argue about who’s taking the shotgun with amusement, until ten minutes pass solely on that and he flies into the car and claims it for himself before any of them manage to turn their heads around. Bob looks bored out of his mind while he’s driving them all to Frank’s house, cursing inside his big blond head on all of their parents for making them the way they are.

By the time they’re outside the Iero residence, Gerard is mad at everyone, Mikey’s got a bruise forming at the back of his shoulder because Ray’s elbow accidentally poked him there and a part of Ray’s hair is slightly baked because of Gerard’s failed attempt of lighting a cigarette inside Bob’s car.

Gerard heads forward first, opening the door without feeling the need to knock. He lunges forward and almost falls over Frank’s mom, who’s grinning at him like there’s no tomorrow. “Hi, Gerard. Where are the other guys?”

“I hope they got ran over by a bus or something while getting out of the car,” he says grumpily, “Is Frank in the living room?”

She laughs, “Yes, he is. He isn’t in a really… good mood. I’m glad you’re here. Well, have fun, I’ll be home at around midnight – tell the boys they can all sleepover if they want. You too, of course, but you know you’re always welcome.”

“Okay,” he mumbles and tries to smile but it comes out as more of a scary clown face than anything else. “Thanks.”

She smiles and he strolls forward, faintly hearing the clacking of the doorknob behind him and Linda talking to his idiot friends [and brother] before he enters the living room. He immediately senses something is wrong when he sees Frank, who’s blankly staring at the TV screen and biting his lip.

“Oi, Frank?” Gerard sits beside him on the couch, grabbing the still warm coffee mug on the table which he knows was made for him and immediately takes a sip.

“Jamia and I broke up,” Frank says lowly, still staring in front of himself. Before Gerard can say anything, the crowd arrives inside the room and sits around, laughing and talking loudly [except for Bob, of course, who just sits in the armchair and grabs a bag of chips] and making it impossible for Gerard to form any sentence he was about to think of. He doesn’t know how this makes him feel, he’s too confused to even remember what he should be feeling.
Everything he’s thinking about is silenced along with the entire room when Bob puts the movie in, Frank leaning his head on Gerard’s chest and sighing loudly. Gerard wraps his arm around Frank’s shoulders and waits for the first movie to finish, saying nothing, simply letting Frank take comfort from his kind-of-sort-of hug, hoping it would be enough before he finds the actual words he can say to make his best friend feel better.

By the finale of the second movie, Frank starts fidgeting around and Gerard totally expects it when Frank nudges him and whispers into his ear [he doesn’t want Gerard’s dear brother to start barking at him for being too loud and ruining the mood], “Let’s go make some more coffee.”

Gerard just nods and lets Frank take him into the kitchen, almost tripping over Mikey in the process and earning an obscenity quietly hissed at him while he jogs behind Frank.
When Frank puts the kettle on the stove and turns to him, Gerard immediately knows why Frank invited them all over. He needs comfort, he needs something to get his mind off the breakup and they have that kind of crew that can turn everything into something funny, stupid and carefree.

“She asked me if I loved her,” Frank sighs, “and I couldn’t say ‘yes’.”

Gerard’s sure his eyes have just balled out a bit. “You don’t?”

“No,” he admits, “I thought I did. But now I know I don’t.”

“How, why? I don’t get it.” Gerard is confused.

“Neither do I. But it’s like… she told me that she knew. But the thing is that she also told me she knows why. And I was like ‘what the fuck, Jams?’” He rubs his face with his palm, fiddles with the kettle and pours coffee into two mugs, “And she said that I should ask you. And she wasn’t even mad. She was just like ‘ask Gee’.”

Now Gerard is panicking, because he’s always been sure Jamia knows exactly what he feels towards Frank, but she also knows Gerard would never be able to do anything to ruin their relationship. He loved Frank and respected Jamia too much for that. “I have no idea, dude.”

“Cut the crap, Gerard,” Frank rolls his eyes, “You’re sweating, rubbing your hands on your sweats, looking around like a crazy person and literally butchering your lower lip with your teeth.”

Darn that fucking Frank and his fucking psychic abilities to know Gerard better than he knows himself. “Fuck off.”

Frank chuckles, “No, seriously, what is it?”

Before Gerard can even think, he blurts out, “I think Jamia left you because she knows I’ve been-“

“What are you two doing in the kitchen, leaving those three pigs alone in the living room to ruin my furniture?” Linda cuts him off with a joking glare.

And now Gerard feels slightly relieved she interrupted him at the exact moment he was about to tell Frank everything he’s been wanting to tell him for the past year or so – simply because he’s a fucking retarded chicken without any balls upstairs. “We were just here to make some coffee, we’re leaving.”

“I know, Gee, what’s up with you today? You’re much more grumpy than usual.”

“Nah,” Frank shakes his head and they both laugh, while Gerard forces out an awkward grin.

Before they retreat back into the living room, Gerard notices that Frank’s look is telling him that they’ll have to discuss this later. He gulps loudly and follows him to the couch, where they sit in their previous position and endure the third movie without a word exchanged. When the credits of ‘Saw 3’ start listing on the screen, they all agree they should go to bed – Bob going home because his mom needs the car in the morning – Ray, Mikey and Gerard deciding to stay over. Ray lives with his grandma so he doesn’t need to bother asking [she’s a seventy year old lady with memory issues] and the brothers simply don’t give a damn because: a) Gerard is a grown-up man [barely 21, will-go-to-art-school-in-fall-maybe-he-doesn’t-know-perhaps-he-won’t-feel-like-it, unemployed, living in his mother’s basement] and Mikey [17, top of his class, has an actual room] is allowed to go literally everywhere if he’s with Gerard; b) their mom is out of town on business and they can do whatever the fuck they want without getting in trouble.

Mikey and Ray finally settle on taking the couch, Gerard sleeping with Frank simply because they literally live on top of each other and don’t have to worry about being embarrassed of cuddling.

When they get to Frank’s room, Gerard changes in the bathroom before brushing his teeth thoroughly [Is it too weird that he has his own toothbrush in Frank’s bathroom?] and exits the room hoping Frank’s forgotten all about the conversation they had in the kitchen.

“Gerard, we need to talk about the thing we talked about in the kitchen.”

Guess not.

“Uhm, okay,” Gerard sits on Frank’s bed.

“You think Jamia left me because she knows you’ve been…?”

Gerard looks at him judgmentally, “You actually remember the exact sentence?”

Frank rolls his eyes.

“Okay, okay,” Gerard sighs. This is it, he thinks. “I think Jamia left you because she knows I’ve been having… these…” he struggles with words, “These… feelings.”

Frank bawls his eyes out. He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, then blurts, “Are you shitting me?”

“Shit, sorry… look – I shouldn’t have said anything, okay? Forget that I said anything.” Gerard is really scared and confused now, he has no idea what the fuck he’s even talking about or what the face Frank’s pulling off is representing.

“Okay,” Frank breathes, “I need to… to think.”

“Okay,” Gerard says, terrified. The scenario in his head now reads ‘dead by sunrise’ and he has no idea what that means.

So, instead of having deep conversations and making out mid sentence [*Gerard makes sad face*], Frank and Gerard decide it’s best if they go to bed and talk about this in the morning.

Which leaves them in kind of an awkward situation because Frank wakes up snuggled into Gerard’s side [not that he's never woken up like that before, it’s only really weird for Gerard this time] and that sends Gerard into complete confusion.

“’Morning,” Frank smiles.

“’Morning,” Gerard echoes and tries to smile, but it really doesn’t work.

“So I was thinking,” Frank says and moves away slightly, but not enough to make Gerard think he wants to move away from him. “I have come to a conclusion.”

“Yeah?” Gerard rubs his eyes with his palm.

“Yeah,” Frank smiles.

Gerard sighs, annoyed, “So, what the hell is the conclusion?”

Frank looks at Gerard for a few seconds, then moves closer until his face is a few inches away from Gerard’s. “This,” he bites his lip and pecks Gerard’s cheek.

Gerard blushes furiously and tries not to smile. “I highly approve of your conclusion.”

Frank rolls his eyes, but drapes his arms around Gerard’s neck anyway. “I somehow knew you would.”

And then his mouth is on Gerard’s and Gerard can’t remember the lyrics of the chorus to Bet On It anymore.

Notes

I have no idea.

HEY MOON,
[I won't do it I'm not that mean]
I know you love me. Or not. Idk I'm not particularly funny today.

Toodles *Sharpay Evans hand gesture*

- Milo

P.S. Can I just note how much I actually love Ryan Ross? YES I LOVE HIM VV MUCH THANKS.