Playground [Frerard AU]

TWELVE

Gerard probably hadn't expected me to answer so quickly when he phoned me, as he answered my 'hey' with an 'oh, um, hi, Frank. Um.'

I smiled at his voice. It was kind of high-pitched and was pretty damn cute. Not that that mattered in a friend's voice. Were we friends? I didn't know but I didn't want to ask him either.

"Do you want to go to the park? Mikey has that annoying Pete kid over and I have serious artist's block," he asked me when I remained silent.

I glanced at my grandma, who was asleep on the armchair opposite me with her newspaper still in the limp hands on her lap. She probably wouldn't wake up for another few hours.

"Maybe you could draw me lounging on that old merry-go-round," I joked, not expecting the - probably exaggerated - gasp from Gerard.

"Hey, that's a good idea, Frank! I forgot that I needed to work on body form," Gerard said, his toothy smile obvious in his voice. "Thanks, man. So will I see you there in 15?"

Well, I couldn't exactly back out now. "Yeah, dude, 15." I returned the smile, even though he couldn't see me. I just felt like smiling.

-

"This is kind of gross," I said uneasily, kicking one of the mossy, rusty bars of the merry-go-round.

"Art is sacrifice!" Gerard cried out pretentiously in a fake English accent. He sounded surprisingly like Rupert Giles.

I stuck my middle finger up at him but he didn't see it; he was too busy wiggling on one of the benches with his legs crossed, probably trying to get comfortable. "Shut up, Way."

He still didn't look up. "Make me, Iero," he deadpanned. I stared, bewildered, but he didn't say anything more. He just kept fucking wiggling.

I attempted to lift my leg high enough to kick off the uppermost moss with my shoe, but to no avail. But God knows I wasn't draping myself across the green filth, so I turned back to Gerard. He had stopped squirming and was now flicking through his sketchbook, which looked new.

"Gerard," I called. He answered with an 'mmhm?' and looked up expectantly. "Can you help me clear this?"

Gerard made his way over to the aging toy and immediately began to push off the moss with his hoodie sleeve pulled over his hand. It was moist and squelchy and pretty disgusting but Gerard didn't seem to notice as he rhythmically scraped off the vegetation.

"Now sit," he ordered when he was done, pointing at the metal plate in the middle of the merry-go-round. I clambered on as he marched back to the bench, suddenly authoritve and even walking in a bossy manner. He was suddenly Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada.

"Should I go all Kate Winslet?" I snorted at my own joke but Gerard just shrugged.

"Your choice, dude." He said.

I decided not to, in the end. It was too chilly for that.

-

"You're a good model; you don't complain that much," Gerard mused an hour and a half later.

I frowned. "I did, you just ignored me."

He wandered over to the swings. "Like I said, you don't complain."

I held back a smirk and rolled my eyes instead, joining him by the swings but not sitting down just then. "Everything here is so goddamn mucky, Christ. How can you even sit there?" I gestured at Gerard's swing.

He leaned over without hesitation and rubbed at the swing in front of me with his sleeve until it was more or less clean. "Just don't touch my sleeve, yeah?"

I nodded and sat, dragging my shoes across the ground slowly while the old, rusty swing swayed.

"So what's the real reason you don't like Pete?" I asked, seemingly out of the blue. I had been wondering for a while, actually, but it had taken a long time to work up the courage to ask. I wouldn't have done so with anyone else, but there was a level of - discussed - mutual comfort between us which made me feel like I could.

Gerard shrugged. "He's there too much," he answered nonchalantly. I raised my eyebrows at him. "Fine ... I feel ... I feel like he's taking away my only friend." The dude gave in bizarrely quickly.

"Your only friend?" I repeated. I didn't repeat it because I was wanting him to correct himself and say that he and I were friends, I was just surprised. I mean, he didn't speak about anyone outside of his family, but I had assumed the guy had at least people whom he hung out with occasionally.

"We're real close, Mikey and me," a tiny smile started to grow on his mouth. "He's not just my little brother like you'd think."

I nodded slowly, processing it. "He's not replacing you, if that's what you think is happening," I told him finally. He just shrugged.

"Yeah," he didn't look at me or say anything else, just started pushing against the ground to swing properly.

The swinging turned into a competition somewhere along the way, with both of us trying to get higher than the other. We were even trash talking each other, and any minute I was scared my stomach was going to explode from how hard I was laughing. It was such a contrast from Gerard confessing and even though I knew I should have been coaxing him into talking more about how he felt instead of bottling it up, he threw his head back like a kid when he laughed. It was cute.

I must have forgotten to keep holding onto the chains at some point, because no sooner than me just getting higher than Gerard, the ground hit my knees with a thud.

"Frank!" Gerard yelled, jumping off of his own swing immediately and crouching beside me. "You're shaking, are you-"

I rolled over onto my back with dust in my hair and my face screwed up in laughter. "Dude, oh my god," I said in disbelief, winded but unhurt.

Gerard lightly slapped my arm. "I thought you were fucking hurt!" He cried, grinning just like me but trying - and failing - to hide it.

He was still kneeling beside me, hovering and trying to make sure I wasn't injured in any way since I was being too much of an idiot to do anything but cackle and lie there.

"Jesus, Frank," he muttered, picking up my hands and staring at my now dirty, grazed palms before moving his gaze to my face. "You were complaining so much about how dirty the merry-go-round and now you're covered in dust. Idiot."

I stuck my tongue out at him. "Jackass."

He kept examining my face. "Yeah," he mumbled. "You have a lot of dirt in your hair." One second he was pushing my dirty hair out of my dirty face and the next he was pushing his mouth against mine.

His lips tasted like cheap chapstick and running away from them tasted like blood in my lungs. I'm not a good runner.

-

im so pretentious