Hey. So I'm writing this story based kind of off experience, kind of fabricated shit, and, of course, kind of awesome killjoy fiction. It started out as me recounting the details of my day, and I realized it would be really easy for me to turn it into something a lot better. It's light Gerard/Frank, from Gerard's point of view. I read a story recently that was really good, but it was from Frank's point of view, so it might be sort of like that one except from Gerard's point of view. I don't know. We'll see where it goes. I feel guilty as fuck when I write fan fiction about real people. Just sayin'.

It starts in 1995.

Part 1

Frank

"That poor boy. I'll bet his parents are divorced."

I glance sidelong at my mother, fighting the scowl that is threatening to twist my expression into an ugly glare. On the television screen I can just make out the profile of a teenager being shoved headlong into a police cruiser. His shoulders are hunched up, like he doesn't really care.

My stomach turns.

I tell her I'm going for a walk. As soon as I'm on the street in front of the house I light up, taking a heavy drag and regretting it immediately - I haven't eaten for two days, so there's nothing in my body now but a handful of pills, a cup of coffee, and nicotine. Not really the healthiest lifestyle. But I feel better out here, less like I'm suffocating, and suddenly life doesn't seem so unbearable.

I don't know where I'm going to go - don't have anywhere to go, really. These days I walk for the sake of walking; I like to be alone. I mean, given, I tried the whole 'rebellious teenager' thing, but I just wasn't feeling it - for about a year I smoked pot on a daily basis with my friends, who were really just a lot of washed up senior jocks, and when they graduated and went off to school over the summer I didn't make too much of an effort to keep up with them. Honestly, most of them were assholes even when they were high, and that's hard to do.

So now I smoke legal and drink by myself. I never really cared for weed all that much, anyway. It makes you fucking stupid.

I reach the curb of my street and just stand there for a minute. It's not the first time I've wondered how I must appear to the neighbors – crazy tangles of hair hanging around my face, hood up, head down. I should be in a fucking teen drama. But really my life isn't so bad – It's just that ever since my dad's parents died, my family and I have kind of stopped talking, so there's not much to do after school except walk, finish my homework, and smoke. Sometimes I do all three at the same time.

I wander the streets for about half an hour. It's colder than I'd like out here, but the wind whips the smoke away from my clothes, so I won't reek of cigarettes when I get home. At this point I don't even think it matters; I'm pretty sure both my parents know I smoke, judging from the amount of half-empty Marlboro boxes that have mysteriously gone missing from my top dresser drawer.

I see Mikey up ahead, and I drop the cigarette with a soft curse and quickly crush it underfoot. Fuck, how did I forget? I'm supposed to pick him up at the bus stop on Thursdays. I'm the worst brother ever.

There's someone else with him, though, and neither of them really look upset. That's when I remember that today is Friday.

Was I really that drunk last night? Damn. "Hey yo, Mikey."

He starts, turning to face me and offering a half-hearted wave. "Oh. Hey, uh... this is Frank." He motions to the guy next to him. I don't miss the frown that comes across my brother's face for a split second when he smells the faint – but familiar– aroma of smoke and booze on me.

I scrutinize the pair of them, painfully aware of how suspicious I must look to two kid middle schoolers (despite the fact that my brother's got two inches on me already). Without meaning to, I stare at Mikey's companion – the kid is short. Really short. It's kind of adorable, really; not that I swing that way. But he has this huge grin on his face and is sort of jumping up and down, waving like it's fucking going out of style. I raise an eyebrow.

"He's cool," Mikey affirms, brushing past me as they continue to move down the street. "When should I tell Mom you'll be home?"

I shrug, even though he's not facing me anymore. The short kid, Frank, on the other hand, casts a curious look over his shoulder. "I'll walk with you guys, I guess. If ya don't mind."

Mikey looks up at me, surprise plastered across his face. "Oh…kay." He turns to Frank as if looking for some kind of support, maybe to get me to back the fuck off. But Frank just shrugs one shoulder, letting it slump back down, and then begins to sing a song I may or may not recognize under his breath.

The walk home is pretty awkward for the first few minutes. I'm still kind of hung over, so my head hurts and I don't have much to say, and Mikey hasn't really been talking to me since I went to shit after the eighth grade. Frank is enough, though. He's fucking playing air guitar as he walks – no, skips – down the street, and I find myself smiling at his exposed back. I can tell Mikey wants to laugh at his antics, but he's trying as hard as he can to keep himself under wraps with me around.

I look away and swallow around the dryness of pain and disappointed anger.

Deciding I may as well just go for it, I ask Mikey how his day was, which is something I haven't done for a few weeks, or maybe a few months. He frowns up at me and says, "Fine," but doesn't elaborate. Two can play at this game, I think to myself. I try again.

"Brewer do any weird shit?" Brewer's the old science teacher at the middle school. The motherfucker looked just like a toad. Acted like it, too. Mikey and I used to laugh about it.

Now, he looks at me, eyes cold steel, silently asking why are you trying so fucking hard? But I don't have a good answer, so I look down, clear my throat, and speed up a little bit. He slows his pace, and soon I'm almost out of earshot.

Right before I am, I hear Frank ask, "So, that's your brother?"

I don't know why, but that pisses me off more. He wasn't even saying it in a rude way - no emphasis on any one word, voice completely neutral, maybe a little too eager. I just really don't want to hear Mikey's response, I guess. I begin to walk faster.

I get to the front stoop a good ten minutes before them and take my time to brush the ashes off my shirt and drench myself with the half-ounce bottle of air freshener I keep tucked away in my jacket. Then I try to get through the front door without Mom seeing me - or, worse, smelling me.

I stay in the basement for the rest of the night, but I can hear Mikey and his new friend up there dicking around. Frank's playing guitar and laughing – Mikey sounds happier than I've heard him in years. It bothers me more than it should, so instead of continuing to listen to them, I turn up an old Black Flag record as loud as it can go and try to finish up one of the two unfinished portraits I started last week. Mikey yells down the stairs at me twice - "Dude, do your laundry!" and "Are you gonna eat?" - but other than that no one bothers me. It's what I'm used to, and it's how I like it.

By 1:00 AM I'm smashed.

I fucking hate mornings. I've never been a morning person, really, but since I started drinking it's gotten a lot worse - my fault, but still, it sucks. I haven't been on time for first period this entire semester.

I don't actually know how I get upstairs into the bathroom, but at some point it occurs to me that I'm not alone in there. Frank is looking at me like I have something growing out of my fucking head. It occurs to me that he was probably taking a piss before I barged in on him because he's kind of frozen, zipper halfway up, this quizzical expression on his face that I don't quite recognize.

Coming from a kid, it kinda freaks me out.

He seems to shake it off. "All yours." He does a weird sort of bow with a flourish and makes his way around me, shooting a grin over his shoulder as he shuts the door behind him. I hit my head with the flat of my palm a few times to clear out the fog, turn on the shower, and get in, trying my best not to give the whole situation too much thought.

It irritates me that Frank was staying the night and no one bothered to let me know. I mean, I'm not the most social being these days, that's true, but I do still live here. This is my home. I feel like it's a small invasion of my privacy, a claim being left to rot.

I brush out my hair with my fingers as best I can – it's getting way too fucking long – dry off, and put on the cleanest clothes I can find, which isn't saying much. It's Saturday, so I feel like I should do something besides get drunk, but I can't decide what to do, really, because it seems like that's all there is to do these days. I stumble into the kitchen, grab a cup of day-old coffee and slam it into the microwave. The clock reads 10:42. Fuck. That's half the day gone already.

I decide to go for a drive - it's better than sitting around here, at least. There are a couple of spots on the other side of town I like to go to sit and draw. So, that's what I do.

I come home around midnight, the half-finished sketch of the county graveyard heavy in my bag, and throw my shit onto my bed. Grabbing a drink from the stash beneath it, I take a huge swig and kick my shoes off into the corner.

With a second glance at the sketch, I see a few mistakes that need smoothing out, but... ah, fuck it. I'll do it tomorrow. I want to sleep for once without being hounded by the demons of my mind. I down the rest of the bottle, close my eyes, and wait for something to happen.

Monday comes in like a bitch. I'm hung over, exhausted, and a little too high to be convincing about anything, so I scoot past my parents without saying hello, figuring I'll just stop and get a cup of coffee at the gas station on my way to school. If I leave early enough, I might have time to browse at the used record store down the highway. Having a car can be pretty fucking awesome.

Mikey doesn't let me drive him to school anymore; not since I almost wrecked us last fall. I was drunk, but not very, even though I think he could tell because somehow the kid can always see right through me. I've heard I'm a very sociable drunk. Everything kinda worked out though, because I'm usually too pissed off at the world in the morning – until my fourth cup of coffee – to want to talk to anyone.

So it's really a blessing in disguise that Mikey's grown to hate me so much. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

I stick a cigarette between my lips, light it, inhale. With my free hand, I stick a Misfits cassette into the player and crank the volume.

Fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee later, I pull in at the record store and kill the engine. It's only 7:30, so the place is pretty deserted, but it's open 24/7 and I know the man on duty. He graduated two years ago - he was a pretty cool guy with a shitty life story. I think he owns the place now.

He catches my eye when I open the door, looking up from a rack toward the front, and I give him a little half-nod. He grins.

"Damn, look who the fuck it is! Haven't seen you in a minute – thought you were dead or gone."

I shrug. I guess It's been a few months since I checked in. "Hey, I have school and shit. Busy life." He rolls his eyes, and I laugh. "Got anything good?" He knows the kind of music I like, and I've already bought out the collective works of The Misfits, as well as Anthrax, thanks to Mikey.

He nods, motioning toward a corner of the room, and we walk there together as he continues to talk. "You didn't drop out, man." He claps me on the back, and I snort. "I'm proud a' you."

When he was still in school, I was going through a hard time, with myself and with my family. I got kicked out of a band because I wasn't good enough at guitar, which sucked because I had been so excited for it, and my parents didn't seem to understand or even care. But when this guy pointed out that I had other talents, I tried to take it in stride - given, alcoholism isn't really advised for such a scenario, but then, you have to take what you can get. It was true; I hadn't dropped out, and I was one of the unspoken superlative 'most likely to fail's. With only a few months left to go until graduation, I couldn't help but feel a little proud of myself.

He hands me a used Iron Maiden tape I haven't seen for years, and I grin and thank him. This should get me through the next few days, at least. As he rings me up, he asks about my little brother, since I used to bring Mikey here with me some afternoons - a sort of 'brotherly bonding' thing, which was easy on the pair of us because we both love music. My stomach twists into itself.

"We don't talk much. He's hanging out with a new guy, though. Frank something." I shrug half-heartedly. "From what I've heard, he's good with a guitar."

"Frank? Not Frank Iero, is it?" He laughs. "That kid's fucking crazy."

My head snaps up and suddenly I'm interested again. No offense to this guy, but I know the kind of company he keeps, and I don't want Mikey getting sucked up into the refuse of Belleville. "I don't know; maybe," I say slowly. Should I even ask? "Really fucking short with a lip ring?"

He sniggers. "Yeah, sounds like Frank."

"Huh." I feel impatience burning up my spine as I bite the inside of my cheek. "How do you know him?"

He finishes ringing me up and hands me the tape, no bag. "He plays guitar on the local scene, actually. He is pretty damn good, but he can't really stay in any one place for too long. No one can handle him." He smiles again, but it's a calmer smile now, and I relax. Frank's not using, then. "He's hyperactive as fuck, but he's a good kid."

"Oh." My face heats up a little bit, impatience turned to embarrassed relief.

"Don't sweat it," he laughs. "I'm clean now, man." He shows me a fresh tattoo on his wrist, a little skull with the number 92 inside of it. "Two years last month."

"That's good," I say, and I mean it. It's sort of a relief. Around here, more people go to shit from their high horses than ever clean themselves up. "That's really good."

He nods, motioning toward the clock and haphazardly shooing me toward the door over the desktop. "Yeah, thanks. Now get your lazy ass to school, Way, and get shit done." He grins at me one last time, and I smile back.

It feels like something's been lifted off my shoulders. Maybe I was more worried about this Frank kid than I'd thought. I shrug it off, though, because otherwise I probably won't be able to get through the day without my head splitting in half from emotional overload.

After blocking everything out for so long, even thinking about giving a shit becomes painful.

Monday and Tuesday fly by. Frank's becoming a regular at our house, which I find odd since Mikey hasn't ever been very social – he used to spend a lot of time with me, but aside from that he tended to hole up in his room and read.

It's Wednesday afternoon, and Frank and Mikey are upstairs jamming again. It's pissing me off, because it seems like for every notch I go up on the radio they get just a little bit louder, and I'm not in the mood for a fucking 'who can be more obnoxious and immature' fight. I give up on my painting and go outside for a smoke instead.

Ten minutes later, as I'm sitting there at the bottom of the drive, the front door creaks open and Frank wanders out. He sees me look up at him and even though I glance away quickly enough, not in the mood for idle chatter, he comes right over to me.

"Hey," he says.

Fuck off. "Hey." I tap my ashes onto the asphalt beside me.

"Mikey told me to let you know there's fresh coffee, if you want it."

I brighten up a little bit. "Really?" I stand, brushing off my hands on my jeans. It's been a while since Mikey did something like that for me; then again, he was probably just making it for himself. "Thanks, man." I don't actually know why I'm thanking him; he didn't fucking make it.

Whatever.

"Catch you later, dude." Frank raises his arm in that weird salute he does, then shoulders his backpack and turns to the road. As he begins to march down the driveway, I realize what he's doing.

I ask him what he's doing anyway.

"Going home?"

I stare at him in disbelief. "You're walking?"

"Yeah." He blinks up at me.

"In Jersey?" Maybe I'm being pretentious, but seriously – does he want to get shot? We don't exactly live in the safest part of town, and besides, the safest part of Belleville is like the grossest part of a moderately sketchy motel parking lot. This isn't happening on my watch – fuck, is this what he always does?

"I'm taking you home," I say, and I know my voice is clipped but I can't help it. I burn out my cigarette onto the ground as I turn to the house. "Let me get my keys and tell Mikey, then we'll –"

"No!" He grabs my arm and panic flashes in those wide hazel eyes for a split second. I pause midstride.

I know it's not really fair, but I snap anyway. "What? Did Mikey tell you what happened? It was one time."

He hesitates, looking unsure. "What? No; it's not that. Mikey…" He glances away as he drops my sleeve. "Mikey doesn't know I walk home," he mutters, abashed.

I stare at him for another minute as I digest this information. "Where do you live?" He shrugs. "Where?" I press, putting my hand on his shoulder. I don't really like doing the whole tough guy thing, but I can cut a pretty intimidating figure, I guess, and sometimes it comes in handy.

Frank swallows audibly. "Kearny."

For a second, I'm struck dumb. "You… you walk to Kearny." It's more a statement than a question, but I need to repeat what he said out loud to make sure I'm not hearing shit, because I really don't want to believe he's serious.

He doesn't answer; he just stares at his feet and his fingers twitch like he wants to push me away. I let go of his shoulder and step back.

I start to laugh, and his head snaps up. I don't know why it's so fucking funny, but now I can't stop laughing. My shoulders shake and tears prick at my eyelids. "Kid," I gasp, "how the fuck are you still alive?"

He smiles, a little uncertain. I just shake my head at him, tell him to hold on, then run inside to get my keys, still chuckling.

"Hey," I yell down the hall, "I'm going out."

The only response I get is a sort of half-assed grunt of comprehension. I roll my eyes. "Love you too, bitch. And hey, thanks for the coffee!"

Mikey sticks his head out of his room and looks at me strangely for a minute. His glasses are slipping down his nose - he pushes them up absentmindedly. "Yeah, whatever," he mutters.

For the first few minutes of the drive, everything is silent, which sort of surprises me. Every other time I've seen Frank, he's been running his mouth or jumping around – he doesn't seem the type to feel awkward in these kinds of situations. I assume that he probably doesn't want me knowing where he lives, and as we get closer and closer to the bridge over the Hudson, I can see that I'm right.

Since the traffic sucks today, I realize it's going to be a while before we get there. Irritation settles in, my foot starts tapping and I sigh. "You mind if I smoke?" I ask my passenger. He glances at me sidelong and shakes his head minutely. I raise an eyebrow. "Alright then." Just to be safe, I crack a window, even though it's fucking freezing outside.

He notices the tapes on the dash for the first time and I watch, amused, as he squints and leans forward, picking through a few of them and then stopping abruptly. "Black Flag; no way!" He grins and rips the tape from its packaging.

"Yep." I take the tape from him before he can ask and switch it out with the one in the dock. "Ya like 'em?"

"I love them."

I laugh at that. "Me too. Mikey prefers Anthrax, though." Not that it matters, since I don't drive him anymore. I silently curse at my subconscious for bringing Mikey into everything, but honestly I feel guilty as hell for all the shit I've put him through. I tell myself it doesn't matter right now and try to shut out the voice in the back of my head.

Frank pulls a face, and the tension in the car is suddenly gone. "Ugh, I know."

I laugh again. "What, you don't like Anthrax?"

He shakes his head. "Not my style, man. They're good and all, but… not my style." He turns up the volume a notch as the music starts. "I like other stuff, you know? Punk. Hell, I can even scream a little bit." As he realizes what he just said, he glances up at me, almost shyly, and shuts his mouth.

Goddamn, he's adorable. I find myself wondering how he and Mikey are friends at all, since Mikey's so bookish and shy, and this kid… well, everything about him screams rebel. His hair – long, dark – keeps falling into his face. He messes with it as he unconsciously bobs his head to the music.

I realize I'm staring when I almost hit the car in front of us. A horn blares at me through the open window. "Shit…" I run my fingers through my hair, praying Frank didn't fucking notice, turning away because I can feel the heat rushing to my face. I keep my eyes on the road after that. We listen to the music without speaking for a good five minutes.

"Stop! Stop the car. Shit..." Frank grabs my shoulder suddenly, and I slam on the brakes, grateful we're out of traffic now so there's no one there for me to hit. Mildly frustrated he didn't give me more of a warning, I pull the car over.

"What? Are we...?" I look around – we're on a main road. What is it with this kid?

"I'll walk from here," he mutters, kicking the door open and jumping out before I can object. "Thanks for the lift…"

"No problem. You sure you're okay?" Fuck. I hope I haven't scared him off.

He smiles, but his eyes are tense with something when they meet my own. "I'm fine."

I tell myself he has no reason to lie, as uncomfortable as his repeated claim is making me, shrugging and raising my arm in a wave of farewell. He grins lazily at me as he shuts the door, turning to walk along the sparse grass that borders the pavement, gripping the straps of his book bag tightly with both hands. I stare after him for a moment, lost in thought, before cranking the volume and pealing off down the road.

On the way back, I stop to buy cigarettes, then end up sitting in the parking lot and smoking four of them before I can get up the courage to go home and face myself, because if I'm being completely honest playing Frank's cabbie was more an excuse to get away from the reality of my life than it was a good deed. I haven't done any of my homework for at least three weeks, I'm failing trigonometry, and I don't have either of my portraits done for my art classes.

I'm kind of a first class loser.

Review, if you'd like. Let me know if I messed anything up.

EDIT: Revised 7/19/12 for a timing error and for authenticity of dialogue.