Fic(ish): Untitled Kidfic, For That Is How I Roll
It's spuzz's birthday! \o/\o/\o/ HAPPY MOTHERFUCKING BIRTHDAAAY!
I promised her kidfic? And what I started actually bit a wee bit out of my control (SHOCKING I KNOW), and it will take me a while to actually FINISH what I've started, so for now, I am posting what I have. Because - birthday! Kidfic! Even if you hate me for not posting a complete fic. /o\
Untitled OTP (to be) Kidfic
(about 2,000 words, unbetaed WIP. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, I GUESS.)
In which Gerard is an art teacher...
*
Gerard wasn't a shrink or anything, but he'd picked up on some things in his time teaching art to people barely old enough to write. For instance, Rose came from a pretty fucking secure family - he knew this not just because he'd already met the entire clan, mom to dad to grandma to cousins, but because when he asked them all to draw their dreams, she drew a kite in the open sky, with beige-colored sand as the ground.
When he'd looked at Charlie's drawing, what he saw was not what he'd imagined a five year old to depict. He was really looking forward to meeting the parents of this kid, because so far, Charlie'd only ever been picked up by a babysitter. Gerard laid the paper back on Charlie's desk and gave him a smile.
"Do you like it, Mister Gerard?" Charlie asked, and looking into his baby blue eyes, with that shock of pure blond hair, Gerard couldn't imagine how this kid was capable of adult-like nightmares.
"It's awesome, Charlie!" he enthused. "Very evocative."
Charlie chewed on his lip, frowning, and Gerard squatted down beside him to explain. "That means I can really tell what you were trying to capture."
"Oh," Charlie said and smiled, showing uneven white teeth. "Thank you, Mister Gerard."
"You're welcome, Charlie."
He walked around to everybody's desks until all dreams had been uncovered, then clapped his hands and began getting everyone ready. "Okay, papers on my desk, pencils in your drawers - no, your own drawers, Nicky, not your partner's… that's right. Hands - washed, bags - ready! Got it?"
"Yes, Mister Gerard!" they chorused.
He helped Caitlin heave her backpack onto her shoulders, then held Hank's hand as he huffed and puffed and finally slid the rain boots onto his feet.
"Everyone ready?"
"Yes, Mister Gerard!"
He led them out to the front hallway, where most parents were already waiting to grab their kid and head home. Some stopped to chat with Gerard and Sandy, some just waved and tugged their kids out to the parking lot. Next thing Gerard knew, only two kids were left waiting to be picked up. He searched for Sam's mom's car (Hummers were hard to miss, even if they did look ridiculous in the Montessori parking lot; or anywhere in Jersey, for that matter) and craned his neck for Cleo, Charlie's reliable, if slightly off-kilter, babysitter.
"Gee, I gotta run home - you mind waiting with them?" Sandy asked. "Kid number two got in trouble. Again."
"No, of course not - do what you gotta do," Gerard answered, waving her off. He had nowhere pressing to be, just his stalled out storyboards on the drafting table, and he wasn't particularly looking forward to returning to them at the moment, if he was honest with himself.
"Thanks, babe, you're a gem," Sandy threw over her shoulder as she sped off towards her office.
At that moment, Sam's mom blew through the school doors, hand outstretched as soon as she spotted Sam by Gerard's leg. "C'mon, baby, time to run, say bye to Mister Gerard! Hi, Gerard, sorry about the timing - dog threw up again, had to clean the upholstery."
"No problem, take care!" Gerard called after her, even as the door swung shut. The two of them were left in a ringing silence. Gerard chewed on his lip. "Hey, Charlie, you don't want a Hummer, right?"
"Nope, I want a Beetle," Charlie declared without missing a beat.
"A Beetle? How come?" Gerard loved a kid who could talk cars, but a Beetle. Really? He slumped against the wall and beckoned Charlie over.
"It depends," Charlie answered after a longer pause as he shuffled his feet forward. "It could be yellow? And then it'd be a bumble bee, which would be really neat. But then, it could also be red or green or blue, and then it'd be a slipper."
Gerard felt his eyebrows lift up to his hairline. "A slipper?"
"They look like slippers! Unless they're yellow. Then they look like bumble bees."
Gerard untangled this, then nodded. "You're totally right. Maybe you can draw me a bumblebee Beetle someday, how's that?"
"Deal," Charlie grinned and then swiveled around as the doors banged open again. "Daddy!"
"Hey, kiddo!"
Before Gerard could process the fact that he was finally going to meet Charlie's father, Charlie was enveloped in heavily-tattoed arms by a dude who looked no older than twenty, from where Gerard was standing, and no bigger than a teenager - and pretty much dressed like one. Gerard pushed himself off the wall, but remained a few feet behind, watching. Charlie was barely on the ground anymore, hugged so hard, he was squealing.
"Miss me?" Charlie's dad asked, pulling away and gently sweeping Charlie's bangs out of his eyes.
"Yeah! When did you get back?"
"Oh, an hour ago - sorry I missed your first week at school, buddy, but there's a treat waiting for you at home."
"Oh, what is it, what is it?" Charlie bounced up and down, still holding onto his father's hands.
"A big treat. Huge. Life-changing, in fact," his father answered, grin spreading all across his face. It was a beautiful face, Gerard noticed, but nothing at all like Charlie's, from the dark eyes to the dark hair and a shape that was all wrong, somehow. Gerard wondered what Charlie's mom looked like, because he had to have taken completely after her.
Before Charlie could say anything else about the awaiting treat, though, his father finally seemed to notice Gerard. His grin changed shape and he pushed himself up, until he was striding towards Gerard, hand outstretched in a proferred shake. "Hi, I'm sorry - I'm Frank Iero, Charlie's dad."
Gerard smiled back, because it seemed impossible not to smile at Frank Iero's grin, and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Mister Iero. Gerard Way, I'm the art teacher."
"Oh, please, call me Frank," Frank laughed, then looked down at Charlie. "Art, huh? How is that going, my man?"
"Awesome!" Charlie answered, craning his neck to look up at them both. Only a kid had to crane his neck to look up at Frank, Gerard thought. The dude was barely tall enough to be considered a legal adult, even Gerard seemed to tower over him. He looked relaxed, too, and easy with himself, which was making Gerard decidedly uneasy, considering what he had to talk to him about.
"That true?" Frank asked Gerard, and Gerard shook himself to try to remember what Frank was referring to.
"Oh, yes! Charlie is - well, actually. Would you have a moment to talk?"
Frank's eyebrows grew together, but he nodded. "Right now? Sure, give me a minute, okay? I'll get him to the car… Charles, wanna say hi to grandma?"
Charlie, who had been watching them silently, hollered "Gamma!" at the top of his lungs, which Gerard figured was an affirmative answer, and allowed himself to be bundled up in Frank's arms and taken outside.
Gerard paced the hallway and had a stern talk with himself about possible overreactions to children's imaginations and ruining the guy's day after he'd been away from his family, apparently. But, then again, Charlie... Gerard watched Frank buckling Charlie into his car seat, a dark-headed woman leaning over to chat with them both from the front seat. Gerard wished he could have a smoke, but he was still on school property, and the school board seriously frowned on such things.
By the time Frank jogged back to the school, Gerard managed to wind himself up enough that when he accidentally caught his own reflection in the window, he saw his hair was standing on end and every which way. He quickly ran a hand through it to calm it down, though he suspected it probably didn't work. It was a good thing nobody ever expected an art teacher to look like the principal, or he'd be in trouble.
"So, what's going on?" Frank asked without much preamble. Without Charlie there to balance him out, he looked like any punk kid Gerard had known in his heyday, with the sort of energy that could only be expelled in the pit. It was almost like having a flashback. Gerard wondered what his story was, but he wasn't going to pre-judge, just lay out the facts.
"Right." He chewed on his lip a little, then forced himself to stand still and talk like the adult that he was. He had to have at least eight years on this guy, might as well act like it. "Charlie's great - very attentive, according to all the teachers, and very quick. I noticed that too, actually. I - well, actually, could you - uhm." Gerard couldn't actually illustrate his point without, well, the illustration. "Would you mind coming with me? I wanted to show you Charlie's drawing from today."
Frank turned to look out the window at the lot, biting his lip, then swiveled back and shrugged. "Sure thing, lead the way."
Gerard exhaled and led him through the bright hallways that would be dimmed by janitors in just a few minutes. They never dawdled in this place, Gerard noticed.
He hated small talk, so the fact that his classroom was just around the corner was a god-send. He walked right up to his desk and shuffled through the day's drawings until he found Charlie's. "Here. He drew this for today's assignment, which was to depict your dreams."
Gerard extended the drawing to Frank, who took it from him, frowning. Gerard watched him for any signs of understanding, but all he saw was deep concentration.
"Okay," Frank finally said after a long moment. "I can see that this is weird, but I want to hear your take on it."
Gerard nodded and stepped closer until they could both see the drawing from the right angle. "I think the first thing that struck me was the fact that he's not just flying, he's falling. Dreaming about that's usually a good sign of somebody who's extremely anxious, like. Most of the time."
Frank nodded, then pointed at the left-hand side. Gerard noticed that even his hands were tattooed. "And that's pretty self-explanatory, right?"
"Right," Gerard sighed. The dark, messy clouds behind Charlie's flying figure, the scaly monster hands - something about it all was too evocative, too real to be anything but a true nightmare. "Honestly, this is a pretty exceptional drawing, Mister - Frank. Charlie's very talented."
"He is," Frank answered without missing a beat, sounding pretty damn proud. "But I'm guessing that's not the reason - I mean."
Gerard stepped away and let Frank hang on to the drawing. He watched his face for a moment, then sighed. "Look, I'm obligated to, you know, make known my concerns, and Charlie's such a good kid. I just. I hope that - " He really, really despised this part of the job, really and truly. "Well, that everything is all right for him. At home."
Frank allowed the page to flutter in his hands before looking up at Gerard and tilting his head, like he was considering him. "Charlie's good now. These nightmares - they happen, I know. He's got, hmmm." Gerard watched as Frank went through a series of nervous tics, from scratching his neck, to palming his cheek, to screwing up his eyes and then giving a nervous laugh. "Look, he's got a - history. When I got him, he was already two and a half, and through some stuff. But he's good now. Really good."
It was like things clicked into place immediately. As incongruous as Frank's appearance was, and as odd as it seemed to see a father who's decked out in ink, the fact that Charlie was adopted made more sense than anything he could have come up with on his own. It was also a huge fucking relief. "Oh, good. Good, then. I'm sorry to have kept you - I just wanted you to know."
He felt even more like a jackass now, but it was his job, and so he'd done it. Frank, it appeared, understood. "Not a problem - believe me, I love a teacher who notices this shit - I mean. You know. Who cares," Frank said with a small smile. "I've been away on business, but I'm back now, so we'll probably see more of each other." He extended his hand again. "Good to meet you, Mister Way."
"Gerard," Gerard answered dumbly, shaking his head. "I'll see you later, then."
"Yep. Gotta go and give that kid his first dog now," Frank grinned and walked out the door backwards, lifting his hand in a wave.
It wasn't until Gerard was completely alone that he allowed himself to sink down onto one of the tiny tables and wipe his forehead. He fucking hated when he had to do more than just teach motherfucking art.
*
HAPPY FRIDAY TO EVERYBODY ELSE!
I promised her kidfic? And what I started actually bit a wee bit out of my control (SHOCKING I KNOW), and it will take me a while to actually FINISH what I've started, so for now, I am posting what I have. Because - birthday! Kidfic! Even if you hate me for not posting a complete fic. /o\
Untitled OTP (to be) Kidfic
(about 2,000 words, unbetaed WIP. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, I GUESS.)
In which Gerard is an art teacher...
*
Gerard wasn't a shrink or anything, but he'd picked up on some things in his time teaching art to people barely old enough to write. For instance, Rose came from a pretty fucking secure family - he knew this not just because he'd already met the entire clan, mom to dad to grandma to cousins, but because when he asked them all to draw their dreams, she drew a kite in the open sky, with beige-colored sand as the ground.
When he'd looked at Charlie's drawing, what he saw was not what he'd imagined a five year old to depict. He was really looking forward to meeting the parents of this kid, because so far, Charlie'd only ever been picked up by a babysitter. Gerard laid the paper back on Charlie's desk and gave him a smile.
"Do you like it, Mister Gerard?" Charlie asked, and looking into his baby blue eyes, with that shock of pure blond hair, Gerard couldn't imagine how this kid was capable of adult-like nightmares.
"It's awesome, Charlie!" he enthused. "Very evocative."
Charlie chewed on his lip, frowning, and Gerard squatted down beside him to explain. "That means I can really tell what you were trying to capture."
"Oh," Charlie said and smiled, showing uneven white teeth. "Thank you, Mister Gerard."
"You're welcome, Charlie."
He walked around to everybody's desks until all dreams had been uncovered, then clapped his hands and began getting everyone ready. "Okay, papers on my desk, pencils in your drawers - no, your own drawers, Nicky, not your partner's… that's right. Hands - washed, bags - ready! Got it?"
"Yes, Mister Gerard!" they chorused.
He helped Caitlin heave her backpack onto her shoulders, then held Hank's hand as he huffed and puffed and finally slid the rain boots onto his feet.
"Everyone ready?"
"Yes, Mister Gerard!"
He led them out to the front hallway, where most parents were already waiting to grab their kid and head home. Some stopped to chat with Gerard and Sandy, some just waved and tugged their kids out to the parking lot. Next thing Gerard knew, only two kids were left waiting to be picked up. He searched for Sam's mom's car (Hummers were hard to miss, even if they did look ridiculous in the Montessori parking lot; or anywhere in Jersey, for that matter) and craned his neck for Cleo, Charlie's reliable, if slightly off-kilter, babysitter.
"Gee, I gotta run home - you mind waiting with them?" Sandy asked. "Kid number two got in trouble. Again."
"No, of course not - do what you gotta do," Gerard answered, waving her off. He had nowhere pressing to be, just his stalled out storyboards on the drafting table, and he wasn't particularly looking forward to returning to them at the moment, if he was honest with himself.
"Thanks, babe, you're a gem," Sandy threw over her shoulder as she sped off towards her office.
At that moment, Sam's mom blew through the school doors, hand outstretched as soon as she spotted Sam by Gerard's leg. "C'mon, baby, time to run, say bye to Mister Gerard! Hi, Gerard, sorry about the timing - dog threw up again, had to clean the upholstery."
"No problem, take care!" Gerard called after her, even as the door swung shut. The two of them were left in a ringing silence. Gerard chewed on his lip. "Hey, Charlie, you don't want a Hummer, right?"
"Nope, I want a Beetle," Charlie declared without missing a beat.
"A Beetle? How come?" Gerard loved a kid who could talk cars, but a Beetle. Really? He slumped against the wall and beckoned Charlie over.
"It depends," Charlie answered after a longer pause as he shuffled his feet forward. "It could be yellow? And then it'd be a bumble bee, which would be really neat. But then, it could also be red or green or blue, and then it'd be a slipper."
Gerard felt his eyebrows lift up to his hairline. "A slipper?"
"They look like slippers! Unless they're yellow. Then they look like bumble bees."
Gerard untangled this, then nodded. "You're totally right. Maybe you can draw me a bumblebee Beetle someday, how's that?"
"Deal," Charlie grinned and then swiveled around as the doors banged open again. "Daddy!"
"Hey, kiddo!"
Before Gerard could process the fact that he was finally going to meet Charlie's father, Charlie was enveloped in heavily-tattoed arms by a dude who looked no older than twenty, from where Gerard was standing, and no bigger than a teenager - and pretty much dressed like one. Gerard pushed himself off the wall, but remained a few feet behind, watching. Charlie was barely on the ground anymore, hugged so hard, he was squealing.
"Miss me?" Charlie's dad asked, pulling away and gently sweeping Charlie's bangs out of his eyes.
"Yeah! When did you get back?"
"Oh, an hour ago - sorry I missed your first week at school, buddy, but there's a treat waiting for you at home."
"Oh, what is it, what is it?" Charlie bounced up and down, still holding onto his father's hands.
"A big treat. Huge. Life-changing, in fact," his father answered, grin spreading all across his face. It was a beautiful face, Gerard noticed, but nothing at all like Charlie's, from the dark eyes to the dark hair and a shape that was all wrong, somehow. Gerard wondered what Charlie's mom looked like, because he had to have taken completely after her.
Before Charlie could say anything else about the awaiting treat, though, his father finally seemed to notice Gerard. His grin changed shape and he pushed himself up, until he was striding towards Gerard, hand outstretched in a proferred shake. "Hi, I'm sorry - I'm Frank Iero, Charlie's dad."
Gerard smiled back, because it seemed impossible not to smile at Frank Iero's grin, and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Mister Iero. Gerard Way, I'm the art teacher."
"Oh, please, call me Frank," Frank laughed, then looked down at Charlie. "Art, huh? How is that going, my man?"
"Awesome!" Charlie answered, craning his neck to look up at them both. Only a kid had to crane his neck to look up at Frank, Gerard thought. The dude was barely tall enough to be considered a legal adult, even Gerard seemed to tower over him. He looked relaxed, too, and easy with himself, which was making Gerard decidedly uneasy, considering what he had to talk to him about.
"That true?" Frank asked Gerard, and Gerard shook himself to try to remember what Frank was referring to.
"Oh, yes! Charlie is - well, actually. Would you have a moment to talk?"
Frank's eyebrows grew together, but he nodded. "Right now? Sure, give me a minute, okay? I'll get him to the car… Charles, wanna say hi to grandma?"
Charlie, who had been watching them silently, hollered "Gamma!" at the top of his lungs, which Gerard figured was an affirmative answer, and allowed himself to be bundled up in Frank's arms and taken outside.
Gerard paced the hallway and had a stern talk with himself about possible overreactions to children's imaginations and ruining the guy's day after he'd been away from his family, apparently. But, then again, Charlie... Gerard watched Frank buckling Charlie into his car seat, a dark-headed woman leaning over to chat with them both from the front seat. Gerard wished he could have a smoke, but he was still on school property, and the school board seriously frowned on such things.
By the time Frank jogged back to the school, Gerard managed to wind himself up enough that when he accidentally caught his own reflection in the window, he saw his hair was standing on end and every which way. He quickly ran a hand through it to calm it down, though he suspected it probably didn't work. It was a good thing nobody ever expected an art teacher to look like the principal, or he'd be in trouble.
"So, what's going on?" Frank asked without much preamble. Without Charlie there to balance him out, he looked like any punk kid Gerard had known in his heyday, with the sort of energy that could only be expelled in the pit. It was almost like having a flashback. Gerard wondered what his story was, but he wasn't going to pre-judge, just lay out the facts.
"Right." He chewed on his lip a little, then forced himself to stand still and talk like the adult that he was. He had to have at least eight years on this guy, might as well act like it. "Charlie's great - very attentive, according to all the teachers, and very quick. I noticed that too, actually. I - well, actually, could you - uhm." Gerard couldn't actually illustrate his point without, well, the illustration. "Would you mind coming with me? I wanted to show you Charlie's drawing from today."
Frank turned to look out the window at the lot, biting his lip, then swiveled back and shrugged. "Sure thing, lead the way."
Gerard exhaled and led him through the bright hallways that would be dimmed by janitors in just a few minutes. They never dawdled in this place, Gerard noticed.
He hated small talk, so the fact that his classroom was just around the corner was a god-send. He walked right up to his desk and shuffled through the day's drawings until he found Charlie's. "Here. He drew this for today's assignment, which was to depict your dreams."
Gerard extended the drawing to Frank, who took it from him, frowning. Gerard watched him for any signs of understanding, but all he saw was deep concentration.
"Okay," Frank finally said after a long moment. "I can see that this is weird, but I want to hear your take on it."
Gerard nodded and stepped closer until they could both see the drawing from the right angle. "I think the first thing that struck me was the fact that he's not just flying, he's falling. Dreaming about that's usually a good sign of somebody who's extremely anxious, like. Most of the time."
Frank nodded, then pointed at the left-hand side. Gerard noticed that even his hands were tattooed. "And that's pretty self-explanatory, right?"
"Right," Gerard sighed. The dark, messy clouds behind Charlie's flying figure, the scaly monster hands - something about it all was too evocative, too real to be anything but a true nightmare. "Honestly, this is a pretty exceptional drawing, Mister - Frank. Charlie's very talented."
"He is," Frank answered without missing a beat, sounding pretty damn proud. "But I'm guessing that's not the reason - I mean."
Gerard stepped away and let Frank hang on to the drawing. He watched his face for a moment, then sighed. "Look, I'm obligated to, you know, make known my concerns, and Charlie's such a good kid. I just. I hope that - " He really, really despised this part of the job, really and truly. "Well, that everything is all right for him. At home."
Frank allowed the page to flutter in his hands before looking up at Gerard and tilting his head, like he was considering him. "Charlie's good now. These nightmares - they happen, I know. He's got, hmmm." Gerard watched as Frank went through a series of nervous tics, from scratching his neck, to palming his cheek, to screwing up his eyes and then giving a nervous laugh. "Look, he's got a - history. When I got him, he was already two and a half, and through some stuff. But he's good now. Really good."
It was like things clicked into place immediately. As incongruous as Frank's appearance was, and as odd as it seemed to see a father who's decked out in ink, the fact that Charlie was adopted made more sense than anything he could have come up with on his own. It was also a huge fucking relief. "Oh, good. Good, then. I'm sorry to have kept you - I just wanted you to know."
He felt even more like a jackass now, but it was his job, and so he'd done it. Frank, it appeared, understood. "Not a problem - believe me, I love a teacher who notices this shit - I mean. You know. Who cares," Frank said with a small smile. "I've been away on business, but I'm back now, so we'll probably see more of each other." He extended his hand again. "Good to meet you, Mister Way."
"Gerard," Gerard answered dumbly, shaking his head. "I'll see you later, then."
"Yep. Gotta go and give that kid his first dog now," Frank grinned and walked out the door backwards, lifting his hand in a wave.
It wasn't until Gerard was completely alone that he allowed himself to sink down onto one of the tiny tables and wipe his forehead. He fucking hated when he had to do more than just teach motherfucking art.
*
HAPPY FRIDAY TO EVERYBODY ELSE!