Gerard was bored. Really bored. He and his younger brother Mikey had been sitting on a bus for two hours and still had another four to go in their trip. Their mother had bundled them onto a bus at ass-o-clock in the morning to go and visit their Aunt Daisy in the middle of nowhere for the week, something that neither boy was very happy about. There was nothing to do unless they wanted to go to the beach for the whole time (and let’s face it, neither boy would be going anywhere near the water or the sun).

Mikey had abandoned listening to Gerard complain about five minutes into the trip, after a brief struggle to determine who got the window seat (Mikey won after a sharp jab to Gerard’s ribs), in favour of blasting his music through headphones. Gerard sighed for what seemed to be the hundredth time and reached for his backpack, in search of his own pair of headphones, only to find them gone. He whipped his head toward Mikey and scowled at him, only just remembering that Mikey had ‘borrowed’ his headphones last week and not returned them since. His brother glanced at him before sighing and handing over one to his brother. Gerard grinned at his success and settled back into his seat.

It wasn’t long before Gerard’s mind wandered to more interesting places, or just other people. He looked to his right, seeing Mikey still playing some game on his phone, so he looked to the other occupants of the bus. To his immediate left across the isle was a young woman, probably in her early twenties who was reading a book with headphones securely in her ears, Mikey had been staring at her before which made Gerard laugh. A few seats behind the brothers was an older lady with white hair and a small toddler on her knee, Gerard assumed it was her grandson or something. There were a few other people on the bus ranging in age but most were sleeping, reading or talking quietly. There was only one person that managed to catch Gerard’s attention, and that was the man sitting three seats in front of Gerard, in the window seat like Mikey.

To say that Gerard found this man attractive would be the understatement of the century. His hair was a dark brown colour that was styled into some kind of mohawk from what Gerard could see. He couldn’t see all of the man’s face, but quick glances sideways showed light brown eyes and a nose ring, possibly a lip ring as well. The most noticeable thing about him was his tattoos, his arms were absolutely covered in them and there were several on his neck too. Gerard sat there staring at the stranger for several minutes studying his tattoos before some of them started to seem familiar, especially the scorpion on his neck.

“Hey Mikey”, Gerard said as he nudged his brother with his elbow.

“What?” Mikey sighed, obviously annoyed at his brother disturbing his extremely important text message.

“That guy”, Gerard indicated to the subject of his staring. “Where have I seen hime before? He looks really familiar but I can’t figure out where from.”

Mikey glanced over the top of the seat in front of him to see what Gerard was going on about this time. His eyes widened in disbelief when he realised who the man actually was. He sat back in his seat and turned to Gerard with a grin plastered on his face. It was safe to say that Gerard was unnerved by Mikey’s reaction to the stranger, he never portrayed any emotion other than annoyance.

“What?” Gerard asked.

“That’s Frank Iero”, he whisper yelled to Gerard. “You know, the frontman for Pencey Prep?”

Gerard’s mouth dropped open and he leant around the seat to confirm Mikey’s suspicions. He gasped when he realised that it was intact, Frank Iero, the smoking hot frontman of their favourite band Pencey Prep. He squeaked and his behind the seat when Frank happened to turn towards him and make eye contact with him causing Mikey to snicker. Gerard peeked through the gap between the seats to see if Frank reacted at all, but was somewhat saddened to find that he hadn’t. Mikey was still laughing at him, so Gerard shut him up with a hard jab to the ribs.

~~~~~

Another hour had passed, marking the halfway point in their trip to nowhere, and Gerard was still staring at Frank through the gap between the seats in front of him. Mikey had given up making fun of him fairly quickly and was back to texting on his phone. An announcement had been made on the bus a few minutes ago saying they would stop for a food and bathroom break in fifteen minutes, which gave Gerard ten more minutes to figure out how he was going to say hello to Frank.

So far Gerard had decided that he would casually walk up to Frank, introduce himself and ask for a picture or an autograph. He hadn’t worked out exactly what he was going to say to not seem like a creepy fan, even though he totally was, he even started to think that asking Mikey to do it would be a good idea, it’s not like people meet their celebrity crush on a bus on any regular day so he didn’t have any past experience to go off of.

He was pulled out of his day dream by Mikey pulling his hair and making him yelp. He turned to Mikey ready to yell at him but Mikey showed him his phone screen before he could. It was open to Frank Iero’s twitter page where the first post read: “Stuck on a bus, Q&A time!”.

“Are you gonna ask him out?” Mikey said with a smirk.

Gerard hit him on the arm before pulling the page up on his own phone to wait for the questions as they were answered. He glanced towards Frank and his heart sunk as he saw him talking to a girl. She had dark brown hair that curled towards the ends and bright blue eyes that seemed to light up when she looked at Frank. She wore a tight red dress that reminded him of a cheerleader’s uniform and matching red high heels that looked like they could be used to stab someone. He looked down to his lap, feeling inferior to her in his worn out Misfits shirt, paint stained skinny jeans and ratty converse that he had managed to pull on that morning when it was still dark. His unwashed hair with faded black dye couldn’t match up to her perfectly styled look, even her makeup was fresh and perfect as opposed to smudged all over like Gerard’s eyeliner was.

Mikey noticed Gerard’s sudden mood change and was about to question it when the bus pulled to a stop, the driver announcing it was time for a break. Before anyone else could move from their seats, Gerard had his bag and was moving down the isle and pointedly staring at the floor instead of the rock star and the pretty girl.

~~~~~

Gerard had sat down at a picnic table and was joined by Mikey after he had gone to the bathroom, probably to fix his hair. Gerard watched as Frank sat down on the picnic bench behind Mikey, so that Gerard had a clear view of his face. He looked down at his phone sadly. Mikey took out his pack of cigarettes (that he totally did not steal from Gerard) and lit two, passing one to his brother who took it gratefully. The brothers smoked in silence as they were both focused on their phones, Mikey had moved from texting to playing Tiny Tower whilst Gerard was stalking Frank’s twitter which just made Gerard feel worse.

Q: @FrankIero what are you doing right now?
A: On my way to visit family, it’s a long trip so I took the bus

Q: Have you met anyone interesting @FrankIero? ;)
A: People have been nice but we’ll see how it goes

The questions continued in a similar way until someone asked about a new album causing the subject to change. The possibility of new music made Gerard feel a little better but then he looked over Mikey’s shoulder and saw Frank with the same girl as before. She was laughing at something that Frank had said, head thrown back and eyes shut. Gerard watched as she reached out and rested her hand on Frank’s arm, batting her eyelashes at him with a smirk on her lips. Gerard assumed she was trying to be sexy or something and watched as Frank patted her arm and said something to her. Whatever it was, she didn’t seem too pleased about it when she stood up and stalked off back to the bus.

Gerard frowned after her and turned back to Mikey to retrieve his stolen pack of cigarettes. After a brief scuffle over the item involving a lot of flailing and elbowing, Gerard recovered them and turned back towards the bus. As he turned back to yell at his brother to hurry up, he noticed Frank looking at him. When they made eye contact, Frank smiled brightly at Gerard causing him to blush and shuffle away with his head down.

~~~~~

“He looked at me Mikey! He even smiled!” Gerard whisper yelled at Mikey.

“That’s a good thing, I don’t see why that means you can’t go and say hi”, Mikey replied.
Gerard scoffed, “Because no one ever smiles at me. Especially not cute rock stars like Frank.”

Mikey raised an eyebrow at his older brother. He knew Gerard could have social problems but when someone was being obvious and you also had a chance to meet one of your idols, Mikey had thought that his brother would be able to do it. Apparently not. He tried to encourage Gerard by reminding him that he’ll probably never see Frank again, making this a once in a lifetime opportunity but Gerard just sunk further into his seat and put his headphones back in. Mikey sighed and decided he would do something himself.

Before Gerard could even think of stopping him, Mikey was out of his seat and walking towards Frank. The older man had been typing on his phone but stopped when he felt someone sit beside him.

“Hey”, Frank smiled. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m really sorry to bother you but my brother and I are huge fans and he was too scared to some and say hello himself”, Mikey explained. “Would you mind signing something for us?”

Frank beamed at Mikey and nodded, signing a piece of paper for Mikey and another for Gerard.

“Thank you so much, he’ll be so happy to see this”, Mikey smiled. Frank had been much cooler than Mikey had ever dreamed he could be.

“No problem. I’m just glad that I could make someone’s dreams come true”, he replied making them both laugh.

Mikey thanked Frank again before making his way back to Gerard and sitting down. Gerard looked like he was about to be sick and his eyes bugged out when Mikey handed him the piece of paper.

“Oh my God you are the best little brother ever!” Gerard practically squealed.

Mikey grinned at him before turning his attention to his phone once again, leaving Gerard to fangirl over the signature in his hands, but not before he glanced up to see Frank smiling softly at his older brother.

Notes

I'm splitting this into two parts and should (hopefully) have the ending up soon :)