Accelerate || Frank x Gerard || Standalone
all right. so. i was watching 'quad crash videos' with a buddy of mine on sunday and this little idea just sort of popped into my head. and i know i'm falling behind with the next portion of JATT but it should be done by the end of this week, if homework doesn't start to eat my brain, which is entirely plausible. anyway. for now, i am muy muy muy exhausted and really just want to go to sleep even though it's only eight o'clock at night. and so, i give you a small fic to tide you over. and i promise more of JATT soon. and the pr0n for those that requested it. :D
enjoy kiddies.
Frank felt like a warrior, or perhaps a little bit like one of the dragons of legend that consumed entire villages in a single whisper of a breath. It was always like this when he had the helmet on, the front piece jutting out like jagged, gaping jaws, visor smeared with dirt and grime and sweat and the fog of his breath which, somehow, was even hotter than the already stifling climate. His arms and shoulders ached and his legs were shaky and tingling, which was nothing new. The engine beneath him hummed gently and gradually faded to silence. As soon as it was still, he gave the kickstand a shove with the toe of his foot and stepped off, the crunching sound of gravel barely audible over the revving of engines and cheers of multitudes of people.
He yanked the helmet off because, even though it sort of made him feel like Alexander the Great and kept what was left of his brain safely inside his skull, it was still mostly a nuisance. Gasping a few breaths of sun-warmed desert air, he reached up to wipe a clothed forearm over his face, careful not to let the fabric snag on the still-new ring hooked through his lower lip.
It wasn’t his best race, he was sure about that. It had taken him somewhere around thirty-two minutes and while that wasn’t going to hurt his record, necessarily, he’d still come in twenty-sixth out of forty and that was in the lower half of the competitors.
Reaching his arms up in the air to try and expel some of the tension lingering in between his vertebrae, he let out a soft sigh. This had to be the most sore he’d ever been following a race. Granted, this was the longest race he’d ever been entered in so he supposed that it made sense, but still. It hurt. He leaned slightly to his left and a sharp twinge of pain ran up his side.
“Fuck,” he hissed and stormed off, bike in tow, to where the trailer was parked.
*
“This is not in my job description.”
Frank reached up and swatted at the man standing somewhere off to his left. It took a few seconds of aimlessly waving his arm around, but he finally managed to come into contact with the other man’s side.
Smirking victoriously, he replied, voice muffled due to the fact that his mouth was pillowed against his arms, “‘course it is. You’re a mechanic. You fix shit.”
The other man rolled his eyes. “I hardly think your back qualifies as a machine. It is nowhere near as finely tuned as that old school two-stroke you drag around the track.”
Frank chuckled, shifting slightly under the other man’s fingers, which were busily kneading the skin of his left side and the small of his back.
“You know you love Pansy,” he teased in response, referring to the scrapbook-style stickers that the other man had pressed onto the bike--one of the very few pieces that was intended to serve as décor--in honor of Frank’s seventeenth birthday eight months ago.
He could almost hear the other man rolling his eyes, and then the heels of the other man’s palms were hitting the spot in Frank’s side that Frank was certain had snapped or fractured or something like that, and Frank groaned.
“Jesus, Gerard,” he breathed. “You should’ve been a masseuse.”
Gerard just laughed and taunted, “Oh, you are so paying me for this.”
*
The way that Frank and Gerard met, really, was not that interesting a story. Partially it was because fourteen year old Frank had managed, somehow, to tear up the rear suspension of his bike, and he had been so completely and utterly depressed that he didn’t get to race that he’d gone around begging the on-site mechanics to please fix it for him and he would do anything he could to pay them back. Gerard, eighteen at the time and probably too nice for his own good, had agreed to spend a half an hour or so toying with Frank’s bike and got it running better than ever. Frank finished fifth in that race and thanked Gerard immensely--part of which was Frank’s insistence that Gerard let him buy lunch for them both.
Throughout the course of the meal they’d discovered that they were both from the same town in New Jersey which, honestly, was kind of a creepy coincidence. But it gave them both an excuse to talk more, which Frank didn’t mind, and for the first time he felt like he’d actually made a friend at one of these races, not just an acquaintance that shared a common interest.
And really, things just went from there.
*
“You’re coming to my freestyle run this afternoon.” Frank stated with certainty as he leaned against the wall of the trailer beside the tiny cloth canopy shielding the bike Gerard was working on from the midday sun. Gerard stood, using a tattered old rag that looked suspiciously like a sweatshirt to wipe shiny black grease off a small wrench. He frowned down at the vehicle, tapping the wrench gently against his wrist, an action which--Frank had discovered over the past three and a half years--meant that something in the system wasn’t working out the way that Gerard wanted it to.
“I didn’t know you did freestyle,” Gerard commented absently, dropping to one knee and pushing a lock of black hair behind his ear so that he could get a better view of what he was working on.
“Yup,” Frank said, nudging Gerard’s thigh with the toe of his boot. Gerard glared half-heartedly at Frank over his shoulder and went back to tinkering with gears and cogs or something. “And you’re gonna be there to watch me.”
“If I can get away,” Gerard said, furrowing his brow and reaching up underneath the bike to pull at something, after which he hissed, “Goddamnit!” and jumped back slightly.
“Oh, come on,” Frank whined, making sure that his lip jutted out just so because, for whatever reason, Gerard could never say no to that.
Gerard looked up at Frank, sucking on his fingers, a brow arched, and stared for a moment. Finally, he murmured around his (probably) burned digits, “Fine. What time?”
Frank grinned. “Two o’clock. The track that goes through that little forest patch.”
*
Gerard’s heart was somewhere in the vicinity of his throat because, oh God, Frank should not have been leaning so far forward and his wheels were in all the wrong positions and this was his second time going over this jump so shouldn’t he have been more prepared? And then Pansy’s front wheel caught the dirt and Frank hadn’t had the sense to bail before he landed--really, though, when had Frank ever been sensible?--and he went flying forward in a spray of rocks and sand.
“Shit!” Gerard cursed and rushed forward.
*
“That was stupid,” Gerard muttered crossly, and Frank gritted his teeth and squeezed Gerard’s hand. Gerard waited until the wave of pain passed and Frank’s grip slackened a bit to squeeze back. “Why did you think you could land that? You should’ve just jumped when you had the chance.”
He continued to rant under his breath about stupid kids and how they never made the right decisions because they just didn’t know enough and then Frank slipped his hand from Gerard’s grasp and reached up to tug on the sleeve of Gerard’s shirt.
“Gee,” he asked, and from the way the he was breathing heavily and the tensed muscles all through his abdomen and arms and the sickly pale pallor of skin Gerard guessed he was trying very hard to keep his mind off the pain, “please just shut up until the ambulance gets here?”
Gerard squeezed Frank’s hand again, nodded, and pressed his lips into a tight line.
*
Really, Frank wasn’t family, as much as Gerard would’ve liked to claim that he was so that he could ride along in the ambulance with Frank and Frank’s dad and make sure that Frank was okay. But the fact remained that he wasn’t, so Gerard ended up having to wait until after the whole competition was over before he could leave. At the beginning of it all, it was torture, because this was Frankie that they’d strapped to a gurney and loaded onto one of those little box-car ambulances and Gerard had seen the crash videos and they had a tendency to end horribly. And yes, he was perfectly aware that there hadn’t been any blood involved at all, but Frank’s face had been so pale and he’d held onto Gerard for dear life until he’d been pried away by the EMTs and because of all that Gerard knew there was something terribly wrong.
He thanked whatever powers be that he didn’t get pulled over on the way to the hospital, because traffic laws ceased to exist.
*
Frank lived in a state of perpetual motion. At least, that was the way it seemed to most everyone who met him. Gerard had never been able to picture Frank being still, even when sleeping. Frank seemed the type to sway and roll and kick and scream depending on the kinds of dreams he was having. But when Gerard poked his head into the fifth-floor room that the hospital staff had chucked Frank into on short notice, Frank was like a statue. His eyes were closed and one arm was laying over his chest. Gerard cringed when he saw Frank’s left leg, wrapped in a white cast from the knee down, elevated by some contraption stuck to the ceiling.
Gerard shuffled up to the side of the bed, sighing forlornly and glancing down at the boy lying there.
Frank cracked one eye open, yawned, and smiled at Gerard.
“Hey,” he said quietly. If the vague, dreamlike expression on his face was anything to go by, the doctors had definitely supplied Frank with some quality painkillers.
“Hey,” Gerard replied. “How y’feeling, kiddo?”
Frank laughed a little at that and reached up to run his hands over his face. “How do you think?” he teased. Gerard whapped him lightly on the top of the head. Frank made a face.
“You look like shit,” Gerard offered after a long moment of silence, and Frank grinned and thanked Gerard, while he rolled his eyes. Frank reached for Gerard’s hand and squeezed it lightly, again, and Gerard smiled gently and ran his thumb over the back of Frank’s knuckles.
And this was one of those moments that they had from time to time. The moments that sometimes made them both wonder if other guys were like this with their friends because, in all seriousness, neither Frank nor Gerard had ever come across a dude who was quite as touchy-feely as they were together. And it wasn’t like they were running around hugging each other all the time, but sometimes hands lingered on shoulders and there had been one very awkward piggyback ride when Frank was sixteen that got them some looks, but nothing too wild--not counting the Thanksgiving Day ass-grab because, really, it had been an accident, just like Frank continued to insist.
Gerard, for his part, hadn’t really sat down and thought about what these moments of theirs might signify, because he had a tendency to overanalyze things. And if Frank had ever tried to figure it out, he hadn’t mentioned it.
Gerard let his gaze rest on the stark-white hospital sheets for a few minutes, continually brushing his thumb over the back of Frank’s hand, and then he said hesitantly, “I was scared today, when you crashed like that.”
He could feel Frank’s eyes on him and he knew that if he looked, Frank’s brow would probably be furrowed in that quizzical, naïve way that Frank had somehow perfected. But he couldn’t bring himself to. Probably because his statement felt more like a confession than it should have.
The silence was disturbing in its intensity, and Gerard wondered briefly if he should have waited until Frank wasn’t in the hospital to say something. But it was too late to take it back so all he could do was gnaw his lip and give Frank time to respond.
When Frank finally spoke, Gerard let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“That’s fucked up they didn’t let you come in the ambulance,” he murmured quietly and brought Gerard’s hand up to his face so that he could rest it against his cheek. They stayed that way until Frank’s father’s heavy footfalls echoed down the corridor.
*
“Ow, Gerard!” Frank whined for something like the six-hundredth time in the past half an hour. “My leg is fractured in two places, just in case you forgot,” he added bitterly, folding his arms over his chest.
“You’re such a baby,” Gerard said around the pen cap clutched in his teeth. He was using the now-blunt tip of a Sharpie to finish filling in a small area of white space on Frank’s cast because Frank, being a fan of the aesthetically pleasing, wasn’t all that happy to have this gaping white monstrosity clamped around his leg. So, earlier that morning he’d called Gerard over to fix Pansy--the crash hadn’t done that much to her, thank God, but she still needed a little bit of work--and casually mentioned that it would be awfully nice if someone were to, say, draw something on the cast.
And really, Frank thought that if Gerard wasn’t as dedicated to his family’s bike shop, he might’ve ended up being some kind of famous painter. This thought made Frank a little bit sad, though, because he didn’t have the slightest interest in painting so he and Gerard would probably never have met.
“Done!” Gerard announced, capping the pen with a flourish and grinning up at Frank. “What do you think?”
All spread across the surface of the cast was a scene that looked like it came straight from an A-quality comic book: a rider in mid-leap, hands clutching the handlebars, legs kicked up in the air, the fans below him going wild with applause and joy. And then there was the small banner wrapping around the ankle of the cast that read, ‘The way it should have been.’ Frank laughed when he spotted the tiny Gerard caricature that had somehow snuck its way into the audience.
“You drew yourself in,” Frank stated brightly, wiggling a finger at the tiny, smiling Gerard. Gerard nodded.
“Well, I was there, wasn’t I?” he responded, his tone lightly taunting.
Frank said, “Yeah, you were,” like it was one of his fondest memories. He stared down at the drawing for a moment, a gentle grin playing about his lips, eyes hazy with nostalgia, and when he returned his gaze to Gerard there was something glimmering in that brilliant hazel that made Gerard’s stomach roll over itself a few times.
“Thanks,” Frank said in a near-whisper. “I really appreciate it.”
“I…yeah,” Gerard stumbled over the syllables, his cheeks flushing a soft pink. He ripped his eyes away from Frank’s, reaching up to try and tuck a few wayward locks of raven-dark hair behind his ears. And Frank frowned because it had been like this since the hospital. Comments that, previously, would have caused Gerard to go off on an hour long tangent about how amazing he was now turned him into a quivering mass of nerves and embarrassment and, honestly, Frank couldn’t take it anymore. Because he was forbidden from racing for six months, and Gerard was the one who kept him company, always, so he couldn’t bare for things between them to be so strained. Sighing in slight exasperation, he grabbed Gerard’s wrist before Gerard had the chance to scurry off to the kitchen or the garage or any of the other places he tended to go when he was actively avoiding conflict.
“Don’t be like that, man,” Frank pleaded, keeping a gentle hold on Gerard’s arm. Gerard gazed at him from behind a curtain of dark hair, the same way he looked at anyone when he was feeling particularly shy. He hadn’t used that one on Frank in years.
“Don’t be like what?” Gerard asked, and Frank rolled his eyes.
“You know what,” Frank stated. “Quit acting like you’re all afraid of me, it’s really fucking annoying.” He didn’t relinquish his grasp, but he didn’t pull Gerard back either. “I mean, I get what you were trying to say at the hospital. I get it, okay?”
“Oh,” Gerard squeaked, eyes widening in something that was probably terror. Frank didn’t really take the time to identify it because he was fairly certain that if he didn’t get the rest of his speech out, Gerard would dissolve into the plaster of the wall and be gone forever.
“I get it, and I understand where you’re coming from, and I kind of agree,” Frank murmured. Gerard stared at him. For a long moment, Frank listened to the ticking of the clock that hung on the wall. Finally, he yanked Gerard’s arm, causing the older man to stumble forward, and said, voice tinged with annoyance because Gerard just wasn’t getting it, “I’m saying that I like you, moron.”
“Oh,” Gerard said. “Well, then.” And he leaned in to kiss Frank.
*
Frank tightened his hands in Gerard’s hair, head tilted back, lower lip clenched between his teeth because if he didn’t keep it there he knew he’d be moaning. And then his mother would come to investigate and, while she was rather open-minded, Frank doubted she’d be happy to see Frank with another boy’s mouth around his cock.
And really, Gerard was incredibly clever because, after weeks of them both making out and getting flustered to the point that they were willing to circle-jerk, he finally inquired, “So, you’re just not supposed to have sex, right? I mean, with the cast and all?”
“Yeah,” Frank said, frowning, lips semi-swollen and bruised. “Why?”
“Because,” Gerard had said devilishly, unbuttoning Frank’s pants and making quick work of the zipper and the boxers beneath. “That means I can do this.”
And it wasn’t like Frank had never had a blow job before, because there were enough girls at school that were impressed with his driving record that he wasn’t lonely if he didn’t want to be. Hell, it wasn’t even that Gerard was exceptionally good at it, although he did seem to have quite a bit of experience under his belt. It was more that this was Gerard humming around Frank and they’d been friends for years and Frank had swooned--without realizing it--every time Gerard so much as smiled and look at them now. That thought--and maybe the way that Gerard dug his nails into Frank’s thigh just a little--was enough to send Frank toppling over the edge.
“Oh my fucking God,” he breathed. “Oh.”
Gerard winked at Frank, licking his lips, and re-did the younger boy’s jeans. Frank laid back against the soft mattress, a post-orgasm grin--giddy and goofy and incredibly sated all at once--splayed across his face, and murmured quietly, “Why have we not done this before?”
Gerard just laughed and tossed his leg over Frank’s good one, his arm over Frank’s chest, and buried his face against Frank’s neck, where he proceeded to breathe deeply and noisily for the next forty-five minutes.
Frank did not mind.
*
In the back of his head, Frank wondered if this counted as physical therapy because really, that’s where he should be right now. He was going to be just a few minutes later than usual, but it was all worth it.
The fact that Gerard’s apartment was only two blocks away from the physical therapy place was just a blessing from some unnamed deity, Frank had decided weeks ago when the cast had first come off. Because the convenient placement meant that they could make up for lost time from when they started dating. Or they could try to start a world record. Either way.
Frank dug his heels into the small of Gerard’s back and Gerard pulled back and pressed in harder, just like Frank told him to. Frank cried out because that was the spot that made him feel like his whole body was on fire and Goddamn how did Gerard always manage to find it?
The headboard was slamming against the wall and Gerard would probably, later, get a stern lecture from the elderly woman next door while her husband gave him a thumbs up from the kitchen, but none of that mattered because Frank’s appointment had started two minutes ago and his parents were eventually going to ask why they were always running late. And Gerard happened to know for a fact that Frank was a horrible liar.
*
The whole ‘parental interrogation’ thing was not as awkward as Gerard thought it would be (even when he’d responded to Frank’s mother’s question of, “What are you doing with your life?” with “My brother and I are working at our dad’s bike shop part-time and balancing a band in our spare time.”). Mostly this was because he already knew Frank’s dad and, quite to everyone’s surprise, Frank’s dad rather approved. Frank theorized that this was because neither of them could get pregnant accidentally while Gerard insisted that it was merely his own great looks and charm that had inclined both of Frank’s parents to like him.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Frank snorted, his hand resting on Gerard’s upper arm. They were laying, chest-to-chest in Gerard’s bed, their legs tangled together, and Frank was kind of surprised that his parents still let him stay the night over here, even though they knew what Frank and Gerard were probably doing. Although, he was turning eighteen in just a few weeks, so he supposed that he couldn’t complain too much.
“I don’t need to, babe. That’s what I’ve got you for,” Gerard teased in response, leaning in to bite Frank’s lower lip. Frank smiled.
Twenty minutes passed and Frank was comfortably drifting off to sleep when Gerard shifted beneath him and said softly, reaching up to run his fingers through Frank’s hair, “Sweet dreams.”
Frank mumbled something unintelligible in response and fell like a small rock into slumber’s gentle embrace.
*
Being back on the track was not quite what Frank expected. He wasn’t in top form yet, obviously, having just recovered from an injury that knocked him out for six months. But the worst part of it wasn’t his scores. It was the way some of the guys still patted him on the back and said, “Hey, Iero! Good to see you again, buddy!” while others purposefully took longer routes just to steer clear of him. And he supposed that he should have expected something like this because that was the danger of being honest, but that knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less.
In between runs he mostly hung out around Gerard’s trailer and watched the older man screw with bike parts. Occasionally he went to spend time with his parents or stopped by one of his old acquaintances’ trailers to say hello and make small talk. But he liked being with Gerard the best. Maybe it was because they were so in tune with one another that they didn’t even need to speak to be able to convey their thoughts.
Or maybe it was because Gerard was the only one really qualified to kiss Frank full on the mouth every time he had to leave. Whichever.
*
“I can’t believe you did that,” Frank said, hazel eyes round and wide, as he stared at Gerard. The latter was scowling out the front window of his car, grinding his teeth and making rude comments about drivers that really weren’t doing all that bad a job of being on the road. He was also conveniently ignoring Frank, who had commandeered Gerard’s right hand and was currently tracing various patterns onto the pale skin of his palm.
“Seriously,” Frank continued, pretending that Gerard hadn’t just totally blown him off as far as a response went, “I can’t believe it. You could have banned from competitions! Or sued! Or worse. Do you know you could have been arrested?”
Again, Gerard didn’t respond. Just pulled his hand away from Frank to flip some trucker the bird and then let it flop against the younger boy’s thigh again so that Frank could continue. And that right there was the reason that Frank knew that, even though he pretended, Gerard really was paying attention. So he went on.
“He deserved it, though. That kid is a total douche bag. He was even before he heard about you and me.” Frank paused. “And it was pretty cool to see you deck some random dude. I never really expected you to be pro-violence.”
“I’m not,” Gerard said quickly, quietly.
Frank nodded and continued tracing the little patterns with his fingertips. Because, seriously, Gerard really wasn’t one for violence. He thought that guns were ruthless and stupid and he was always slipping little side notes into his and Frank’s conversations about how ridiculous fighting was. It was one of the reasons that Frank was so fond of him.
Another reason that Frank liked him so much was because Gerard could never just say anything straight out. He had to stutter his way through metaphor after metaphor and give words ample hidden meanings and wait for someone else to guess what he was trying to say. Luckily, over the years, Frank had gotten pretty damn good at that game. So, as discreetly as possible, Frank glanced at Gerard out of the corner of his eye, studying the older man and fighting the urge to reach up and touch his silk-soft hair.
Gerard’s mouth was pressed into a firm line as he made a left-hand turn, and then they were on the freeway, heading back towards Jersey and home and that was probably Frank’s parents’ car in front of them and off to the right.
And, judging by the way he’d been twelve different kinds of stoic and pensive and--God forbid--emo on the way home, Frank guessed that Gerard was feeling terribly guilty about what he’d done because, in all honesty, a sixteen year old kid versus a guy who’s turning twenty-two soon? Yeah, there’s very little question as to who’s going to win a fight in that scenario.
For a long while there was only the sound of car horns and tire tread and the occasional expletive from Gerard when someone cut him off or put their brakes on a little too fast for his taste. And then Frank took Gerard’s hand and brought it up to his mouth and kissed Gerard’s knuckles.
Gerard glanced over. Frank grinned at him and winked.
“I love you too, Gee.”
Gerard smiled, squeezed Frank’s hand, and turned on the radio.
C&C welcomed and encouraged. huzzah!
enjoy kiddies.
Frank felt like a warrior, or perhaps a little bit like one of the dragons of legend that consumed entire villages in a single whisper of a breath. It was always like this when he had the helmet on, the front piece jutting out like jagged, gaping jaws, visor smeared with dirt and grime and sweat and the fog of his breath which, somehow, was even hotter than the already stifling climate. His arms and shoulders ached and his legs were shaky and tingling, which was nothing new. The engine beneath him hummed gently and gradually faded to silence. As soon as it was still, he gave the kickstand a shove with the toe of his foot and stepped off, the crunching sound of gravel barely audible over the revving of engines and cheers of multitudes of people.
He yanked the helmet off because, even though it sort of made him feel like Alexander the Great and kept what was left of his brain safely inside his skull, it was still mostly a nuisance. Gasping a few breaths of sun-warmed desert air, he reached up to wipe a clothed forearm over his face, careful not to let the fabric snag on the still-new ring hooked through his lower lip.
It wasn’t his best race, he was sure about that. It had taken him somewhere around thirty-two minutes and while that wasn’t going to hurt his record, necessarily, he’d still come in twenty-sixth out of forty and that was in the lower half of the competitors.
Reaching his arms up in the air to try and expel some of the tension lingering in between his vertebrae, he let out a soft sigh. This had to be the most sore he’d ever been following a race. Granted, this was the longest race he’d ever been entered in so he supposed that it made sense, but still. It hurt. He leaned slightly to his left and a sharp twinge of pain ran up his side.
“Fuck,” he hissed and stormed off, bike in tow, to where the trailer was parked.
*
“This is not in my job description.”
Frank reached up and swatted at the man standing somewhere off to his left. It took a few seconds of aimlessly waving his arm around, but he finally managed to come into contact with the other man’s side.
Smirking victoriously, he replied, voice muffled due to the fact that his mouth was pillowed against his arms, “‘course it is. You’re a mechanic. You fix shit.”
The other man rolled his eyes. “I hardly think your back qualifies as a machine. It is nowhere near as finely tuned as that old school two-stroke you drag around the track.”
Frank chuckled, shifting slightly under the other man’s fingers, which were busily kneading the skin of his left side and the small of his back.
“You know you love Pansy,” he teased in response, referring to the scrapbook-style stickers that the other man had pressed onto the bike--one of the very few pieces that was intended to serve as décor--in honor of Frank’s seventeenth birthday eight months ago.
He could almost hear the other man rolling his eyes, and then the heels of the other man’s palms were hitting the spot in Frank’s side that Frank was certain had snapped or fractured or something like that, and Frank groaned.
“Jesus, Gerard,” he breathed. “You should’ve been a masseuse.”
Gerard just laughed and taunted, “Oh, you are so paying me for this.”
*
The way that Frank and Gerard met, really, was not that interesting a story. Partially it was because fourteen year old Frank had managed, somehow, to tear up the rear suspension of his bike, and he had been so completely and utterly depressed that he didn’t get to race that he’d gone around begging the on-site mechanics to please fix it for him and he would do anything he could to pay them back. Gerard, eighteen at the time and probably too nice for his own good, had agreed to spend a half an hour or so toying with Frank’s bike and got it running better than ever. Frank finished fifth in that race and thanked Gerard immensely--part of which was Frank’s insistence that Gerard let him buy lunch for them both.
Throughout the course of the meal they’d discovered that they were both from the same town in New Jersey which, honestly, was kind of a creepy coincidence. But it gave them both an excuse to talk more, which Frank didn’t mind, and for the first time he felt like he’d actually made a friend at one of these races, not just an acquaintance that shared a common interest.
And really, things just went from there.
*
“You’re coming to my freestyle run this afternoon.” Frank stated with certainty as he leaned against the wall of the trailer beside the tiny cloth canopy shielding the bike Gerard was working on from the midday sun. Gerard stood, using a tattered old rag that looked suspiciously like a sweatshirt to wipe shiny black grease off a small wrench. He frowned down at the vehicle, tapping the wrench gently against his wrist, an action which--Frank had discovered over the past three and a half years--meant that something in the system wasn’t working out the way that Gerard wanted it to.
“I didn’t know you did freestyle,” Gerard commented absently, dropping to one knee and pushing a lock of black hair behind his ear so that he could get a better view of what he was working on.
“Yup,” Frank said, nudging Gerard’s thigh with the toe of his boot. Gerard glared half-heartedly at Frank over his shoulder and went back to tinkering with gears and cogs or something. “And you’re gonna be there to watch me.”
“If I can get away,” Gerard said, furrowing his brow and reaching up underneath the bike to pull at something, after which he hissed, “Goddamnit!” and jumped back slightly.
“Oh, come on,” Frank whined, making sure that his lip jutted out just so because, for whatever reason, Gerard could never say no to that.
Gerard looked up at Frank, sucking on his fingers, a brow arched, and stared for a moment. Finally, he murmured around his (probably) burned digits, “Fine. What time?”
Frank grinned. “Two o’clock. The track that goes through that little forest patch.”
*
Gerard’s heart was somewhere in the vicinity of his throat because, oh God, Frank should not have been leaning so far forward and his wheels were in all the wrong positions and this was his second time going over this jump so shouldn’t he have been more prepared? And then Pansy’s front wheel caught the dirt and Frank hadn’t had the sense to bail before he landed--really, though, when had Frank ever been sensible?--and he went flying forward in a spray of rocks and sand.
“Shit!” Gerard cursed and rushed forward.
*
“That was stupid,” Gerard muttered crossly, and Frank gritted his teeth and squeezed Gerard’s hand. Gerard waited until the wave of pain passed and Frank’s grip slackened a bit to squeeze back. “Why did you think you could land that? You should’ve just jumped when you had the chance.”
He continued to rant under his breath about stupid kids and how they never made the right decisions because they just didn’t know enough and then Frank slipped his hand from Gerard’s grasp and reached up to tug on the sleeve of Gerard’s shirt.
“Gee,” he asked, and from the way the he was breathing heavily and the tensed muscles all through his abdomen and arms and the sickly pale pallor of skin Gerard guessed he was trying very hard to keep his mind off the pain, “please just shut up until the ambulance gets here?”
Gerard squeezed Frank’s hand again, nodded, and pressed his lips into a tight line.
*
Really, Frank wasn’t family, as much as Gerard would’ve liked to claim that he was so that he could ride along in the ambulance with Frank and Frank’s dad and make sure that Frank was okay. But the fact remained that he wasn’t, so Gerard ended up having to wait until after the whole competition was over before he could leave. At the beginning of it all, it was torture, because this was Frankie that they’d strapped to a gurney and loaded onto one of those little box-car ambulances and Gerard had seen the crash videos and they had a tendency to end horribly. And yes, he was perfectly aware that there hadn’t been any blood involved at all, but Frank’s face had been so pale and he’d held onto Gerard for dear life until he’d been pried away by the EMTs and because of all that Gerard knew there was something terribly wrong.
He thanked whatever powers be that he didn’t get pulled over on the way to the hospital, because traffic laws ceased to exist.
*
Frank lived in a state of perpetual motion. At least, that was the way it seemed to most everyone who met him. Gerard had never been able to picture Frank being still, even when sleeping. Frank seemed the type to sway and roll and kick and scream depending on the kinds of dreams he was having. But when Gerard poked his head into the fifth-floor room that the hospital staff had chucked Frank into on short notice, Frank was like a statue. His eyes were closed and one arm was laying over his chest. Gerard cringed when he saw Frank’s left leg, wrapped in a white cast from the knee down, elevated by some contraption stuck to the ceiling.
Gerard shuffled up to the side of the bed, sighing forlornly and glancing down at the boy lying there.
Frank cracked one eye open, yawned, and smiled at Gerard.
“Hey,” he said quietly. If the vague, dreamlike expression on his face was anything to go by, the doctors had definitely supplied Frank with some quality painkillers.
“Hey,” Gerard replied. “How y’feeling, kiddo?”
Frank laughed a little at that and reached up to run his hands over his face. “How do you think?” he teased. Gerard whapped him lightly on the top of the head. Frank made a face.
“You look like shit,” Gerard offered after a long moment of silence, and Frank grinned and thanked Gerard, while he rolled his eyes. Frank reached for Gerard’s hand and squeezed it lightly, again, and Gerard smiled gently and ran his thumb over the back of Frank’s knuckles.
And this was one of those moments that they had from time to time. The moments that sometimes made them both wonder if other guys were like this with their friends because, in all seriousness, neither Frank nor Gerard had ever come across a dude who was quite as touchy-feely as they were together. And it wasn’t like they were running around hugging each other all the time, but sometimes hands lingered on shoulders and there had been one very awkward piggyback ride when Frank was sixteen that got them some looks, but nothing too wild--not counting the Thanksgiving Day ass-grab because, really, it had been an accident, just like Frank continued to insist.
Gerard, for his part, hadn’t really sat down and thought about what these moments of theirs might signify, because he had a tendency to overanalyze things. And if Frank had ever tried to figure it out, he hadn’t mentioned it.
Gerard let his gaze rest on the stark-white hospital sheets for a few minutes, continually brushing his thumb over the back of Frank’s hand, and then he said hesitantly, “I was scared today, when you crashed like that.”
He could feel Frank’s eyes on him and he knew that if he looked, Frank’s brow would probably be furrowed in that quizzical, naïve way that Frank had somehow perfected. But he couldn’t bring himself to. Probably because his statement felt more like a confession than it should have.
The silence was disturbing in its intensity, and Gerard wondered briefly if he should have waited until Frank wasn’t in the hospital to say something. But it was too late to take it back so all he could do was gnaw his lip and give Frank time to respond.
When Frank finally spoke, Gerard let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“That’s fucked up they didn’t let you come in the ambulance,” he murmured quietly and brought Gerard’s hand up to his face so that he could rest it against his cheek. They stayed that way until Frank’s father’s heavy footfalls echoed down the corridor.
*
“Ow, Gerard!” Frank whined for something like the six-hundredth time in the past half an hour. “My leg is fractured in two places, just in case you forgot,” he added bitterly, folding his arms over his chest.
“You’re such a baby,” Gerard said around the pen cap clutched in his teeth. He was using the now-blunt tip of a Sharpie to finish filling in a small area of white space on Frank’s cast because Frank, being a fan of the aesthetically pleasing, wasn’t all that happy to have this gaping white monstrosity clamped around his leg. So, earlier that morning he’d called Gerard over to fix Pansy--the crash hadn’t done that much to her, thank God, but she still needed a little bit of work--and casually mentioned that it would be awfully nice if someone were to, say, draw something on the cast.
And really, Frank thought that if Gerard wasn’t as dedicated to his family’s bike shop, he might’ve ended up being some kind of famous painter. This thought made Frank a little bit sad, though, because he didn’t have the slightest interest in painting so he and Gerard would probably never have met.
“Done!” Gerard announced, capping the pen with a flourish and grinning up at Frank. “What do you think?”
All spread across the surface of the cast was a scene that looked like it came straight from an A-quality comic book: a rider in mid-leap, hands clutching the handlebars, legs kicked up in the air, the fans below him going wild with applause and joy. And then there was the small banner wrapping around the ankle of the cast that read, ‘The way it should have been.’ Frank laughed when he spotted the tiny Gerard caricature that had somehow snuck its way into the audience.
“You drew yourself in,” Frank stated brightly, wiggling a finger at the tiny, smiling Gerard. Gerard nodded.
“Well, I was there, wasn’t I?” he responded, his tone lightly taunting.
Frank said, “Yeah, you were,” like it was one of his fondest memories. He stared down at the drawing for a moment, a gentle grin playing about his lips, eyes hazy with nostalgia, and when he returned his gaze to Gerard there was something glimmering in that brilliant hazel that made Gerard’s stomach roll over itself a few times.
“Thanks,” Frank said in a near-whisper. “I really appreciate it.”
“I…yeah,” Gerard stumbled over the syllables, his cheeks flushing a soft pink. He ripped his eyes away from Frank’s, reaching up to try and tuck a few wayward locks of raven-dark hair behind his ears. And Frank frowned because it had been like this since the hospital. Comments that, previously, would have caused Gerard to go off on an hour long tangent about how amazing he was now turned him into a quivering mass of nerves and embarrassment and, honestly, Frank couldn’t take it anymore. Because he was forbidden from racing for six months, and Gerard was the one who kept him company, always, so he couldn’t bare for things between them to be so strained. Sighing in slight exasperation, he grabbed Gerard’s wrist before Gerard had the chance to scurry off to the kitchen or the garage or any of the other places he tended to go when he was actively avoiding conflict.
“Don’t be like that, man,” Frank pleaded, keeping a gentle hold on Gerard’s arm. Gerard gazed at him from behind a curtain of dark hair, the same way he looked at anyone when he was feeling particularly shy. He hadn’t used that one on Frank in years.
“Don’t be like what?” Gerard asked, and Frank rolled his eyes.
“You know what,” Frank stated. “Quit acting like you’re all afraid of me, it’s really fucking annoying.” He didn’t relinquish his grasp, but he didn’t pull Gerard back either. “I mean, I get what you were trying to say at the hospital. I get it, okay?”
“Oh,” Gerard squeaked, eyes widening in something that was probably terror. Frank didn’t really take the time to identify it because he was fairly certain that if he didn’t get the rest of his speech out, Gerard would dissolve into the plaster of the wall and be gone forever.
“I get it, and I understand where you’re coming from, and I kind of agree,” Frank murmured. Gerard stared at him. For a long moment, Frank listened to the ticking of the clock that hung on the wall. Finally, he yanked Gerard’s arm, causing the older man to stumble forward, and said, voice tinged with annoyance because Gerard just wasn’t getting it, “I’m saying that I like you, moron.”
“Oh,” Gerard said. “Well, then.” And he leaned in to kiss Frank.
*
Frank tightened his hands in Gerard’s hair, head tilted back, lower lip clenched between his teeth because if he didn’t keep it there he knew he’d be moaning. And then his mother would come to investigate and, while she was rather open-minded, Frank doubted she’d be happy to see Frank with another boy’s mouth around his cock.
And really, Gerard was incredibly clever because, after weeks of them both making out and getting flustered to the point that they were willing to circle-jerk, he finally inquired, “So, you’re just not supposed to have sex, right? I mean, with the cast and all?”
“Yeah,” Frank said, frowning, lips semi-swollen and bruised. “Why?”
“Because,” Gerard had said devilishly, unbuttoning Frank’s pants and making quick work of the zipper and the boxers beneath. “That means I can do this.”
And it wasn’t like Frank had never had a blow job before, because there were enough girls at school that were impressed with his driving record that he wasn’t lonely if he didn’t want to be. Hell, it wasn’t even that Gerard was exceptionally good at it, although he did seem to have quite a bit of experience under his belt. It was more that this was Gerard humming around Frank and they’d been friends for years and Frank had swooned--without realizing it--every time Gerard so much as smiled and look at them now. That thought--and maybe the way that Gerard dug his nails into Frank’s thigh just a little--was enough to send Frank toppling over the edge.
“Oh my fucking God,” he breathed. “Oh.”
Gerard winked at Frank, licking his lips, and re-did the younger boy’s jeans. Frank laid back against the soft mattress, a post-orgasm grin--giddy and goofy and incredibly sated all at once--splayed across his face, and murmured quietly, “Why have we not done this before?”
Gerard just laughed and tossed his leg over Frank’s good one, his arm over Frank’s chest, and buried his face against Frank’s neck, where he proceeded to breathe deeply and noisily for the next forty-five minutes.
Frank did not mind.
*
In the back of his head, Frank wondered if this counted as physical therapy because really, that’s where he should be right now. He was going to be just a few minutes later than usual, but it was all worth it.
The fact that Gerard’s apartment was only two blocks away from the physical therapy place was just a blessing from some unnamed deity, Frank had decided weeks ago when the cast had first come off. Because the convenient placement meant that they could make up for lost time from when they started dating. Or they could try to start a world record. Either way.
Frank dug his heels into the small of Gerard’s back and Gerard pulled back and pressed in harder, just like Frank told him to. Frank cried out because that was the spot that made him feel like his whole body was on fire and Goddamn how did Gerard always manage to find it?
The headboard was slamming against the wall and Gerard would probably, later, get a stern lecture from the elderly woman next door while her husband gave him a thumbs up from the kitchen, but none of that mattered because Frank’s appointment had started two minutes ago and his parents were eventually going to ask why they were always running late. And Gerard happened to know for a fact that Frank was a horrible liar.
*
The whole ‘parental interrogation’ thing was not as awkward as Gerard thought it would be (even when he’d responded to Frank’s mother’s question of, “What are you doing with your life?” with “My brother and I are working at our dad’s bike shop part-time and balancing a band in our spare time.”). Mostly this was because he already knew Frank’s dad and, quite to everyone’s surprise, Frank’s dad rather approved. Frank theorized that this was because neither of them could get pregnant accidentally while Gerard insisted that it was merely his own great looks and charm that had inclined both of Frank’s parents to like him.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Frank snorted, his hand resting on Gerard’s upper arm. They were laying, chest-to-chest in Gerard’s bed, their legs tangled together, and Frank was kind of surprised that his parents still let him stay the night over here, even though they knew what Frank and Gerard were probably doing. Although, he was turning eighteen in just a few weeks, so he supposed that he couldn’t complain too much.
“I don’t need to, babe. That’s what I’ve got you for,” Gerard teased in response, leaning in to bite Frank’s lower lip. Frank smiled.
Twenty minutes passed and Frank was comfortably drifting off to sleep when Gerard shifted beneath him and said softly, reaching up to run his fingers through Frank’s hair, “Sweet dreams.”
Frank mumbled something unintelligible in response and fell like a small rock into slumber’s gentle embrace.
*
Being back on the track was not quite what Frank expected. He wasn’t in top form yet, obviously, having just recovered from an injury that knocked him out for six months. But the worst part of it wasn’t his scores. It was the way some of the guys still patted him on the back and said, “Hey, Iero! Good to see you again, buddy!” while others purposefully took longer routes just to steer clear of him. And he supposed that he should have expected something like this because that was the danger of being honest, but that knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less.
In between runs he mostly hung out around Gerard’s trailer and watched the older man screw with bike parts. Occasionally he went to spend time with his parents or stopped by one of his old acquaintances’ trailers to say hello and make small talk. But he liked being with Gerard the best. Maybe it was because they were so in tune with one another that they didn’t even need to speak to be able to convey their thoughts.
Or maybe it was because Gerard was the only one really qualified to kiss Frank full on the mouth every time he had to leave. Whichever.
*
“I can’t believe you did that,” Frank said, hazel eyes round and wide, as he stared at Gerard. The latter was scowling out the front window of his car, grinding his teeth and making rude comments about drivers that really weren’t doing all that bad a job of being on the road. He was also conveniently ignoring Frank, who had commandeered Gerard’s right hand and was currently tracing various patterns onto the pale skin of his palm.
“Seriously,” Frank continued, pretending that Gerard hadn’t just totally blown him off as far as a response went, “I can’t believe it. You could have banned from competitions! Or sued! Or worse. Do you know you could have been arrested?”
Again, Gerard didn’t respond. Just pulled his hand away from Frank to flip some trucker the bird and then let it flop against the younger boy’s thigh again so that Frank could continue. And that right there was the reason that Frank knew that, even though he pretended, Gerard really was paying attention. So he went on.
“He deserved it, though. That kid is a total douche bag. He was even before he heard about you and me.” Frank paused. “And it was pretty cool to see you deck some random dude. I never really expected you to be pro-violence.”
“I’m not,” Gerard said quickly, quietly.
Frank nodded and continued tracing the little patterns with his fingertips. Because, seriously, Gerard really wasn’t one for violence. He thought that guns were ruthless and stupid and he was always slipping little side notes into his and Frank’s conversations about how ridiculous fighting was. It was one of the reasons that Frank was so fond of him.
Another reason that Frank liked him so much was because Gerard could never just say anything straight out. He had to stutter his way through metaphor after metaphor and give words ample hidden meanings and wait for someone else to guess what he was trying to say. Luckily, over the years, Frank had gotten pretty damn good at that game. So, as discreetly as possible, Frank glanced at Gerard out of the corner of his eye, studying the older man and fighting the urge to reach up and touch his silk-soft hair.
Gerard’s mouth was pressed into a firm line as he made a left-hand turn, and then they were on the freeway, heading back towards Jersey and home and that was probably Frank’s parents’ car in front of them and off to the right.
And, judging by the way he’d been twelve different kinds of stoic and pensive and--God forbid--emo on the way home, Frank guessed that Gerard was feeling terribly guilty about what he’d done because, in all honesty, a sixteen year old kid versus a guy who’s turning twenty-two soon? Yeah, there’s very little question as to who’s going to win a fight in that scenario.
For a long while there was only the sound of car horns and tire tread and the occasional expletive from Gerard when someone cut him off or put their brakes on a little too fast for his taste. And then Frank took Gerard’s hand and brought it up to his mouth and kissed Gerard’s knuckles.
Gerard glanced over. Frank grinned at him and winked.
“I love you too, Gee.”
Gerard smiled, squeezed Frank’s hand, and turned on the radio.
C&C welcomed and encouraged. huzzah!