Gerard had seen a flyer at his local comic shop advertising a punk rock show not far from where he lived. He liked music, he thought, but maybe the most nagging reason on his mind as he decided whether or not to actually go was the fact that, really, he could use spending some time outside of his dark basement bedroom. His glow-in-the-dark pallor evidenced the fact that he spent the majority of his time in that room.

He had asked his closest friend Ryan if he'd want to go to the show Friday night, but Ryan had declined, raving on manically about how he was working on some art project, which probably meant something like covering his face in intricate designs with makeup and taking photos of himself. He instead invited Gerard over, but Gerard had already made up his mind that he would venture out into the living world. It was Friday and he was seventeen, afterall; he didn't get out enough, so he decided to do just that, almost as a challenge to himself.

As his shitty little black car pulled into a parking space at the back of the venue, he almost regretted the decision, only for a few beats as he made his way on foot around the block to the building's entrance. A few kids were gathered outside smoking, and they looked kind of intimidating.

Sighing a deep breath, he pushed through the door. One of his hands ran through his greasy, black mess of hair as he crossed the club, eyes scanning around to all the other kids who had come out for the show tonight.

Small groups of kids engaged in rowdy conversation, someone threw their head back in laughter at something someone else had said, friends greeted each other and embraced with pats on the back, couples had arms around each other's waists, some of them attached at the face. Some were even stomping around to the pre-show music echoing out of the club speakers, getting pumped up for the show about to begin.

Shoving his hands roughly into the pockets of his jeans, he made his way across the floor. The leather jacket he always wore when he ventured out was tough and thick, hugging his teenage body like armor, supplying its wearer with some sort of diluted confidence.

He was all by himself, of course. It was a little awkward, most things usually were, but he didn't mind that terribly. He hardly even acknowledged it, really. The boy was always deep in his own head, so much so that a lot of the time things just seemed to be happening to him without him having given them much thought or consideration.

Gerard had wandered his way on the floor pretty close to the stage, only a few rows of kids in front of him, when the house lights dimmed and then shot up again ominously to a wild chorus of cheering teenagers. Everyone rushed to pack in as close as possible, and Gerard felt the mass of people constrict around him.

As the band was taking the stage, he felt movement to his left and noticed a small boy pushing through the crowd, hands clasped in front of him to cut through the bodies. The boy stopped when he was directly next to Gerard, being unable to get any closer to the stage with everyone cramped in so tightly.

Maybe he wasn't the only one here by himself afterall, Gerard thought as he surveyed the boy who was now standing right beside him. He had inky hair curling around to perfectly frame his creamy complexion, and sparkling eyes set off by shiny metal pierced through his nose and lip. He noticed tattoos peaking out from wherever they could and took just a moment to wonder about all the art he couldn't see, obstructed by the boy's black hoodie.

Staking claim in his spot on the floor, the shorter boy shot Gerard a brief glance, an informal greeting, raising his eyebrows and smirking as he looked back toward the stage.

The band burst to life with screams and thrashing bodies and fingers making instruments elicit dirty, passionate noise as the crowd lit up with screams and shouts of its own.

A small smirk eventually found its way to Gerard's lips as he zoned in on the stage before him. Song after song began and ended, and he was entranced, his eyes going almost tunnel-vision as he fixated on the band, rooted to his spot as the edges of his vision blurred, suddenly unimportant as he watched the band playing hard.

He was only brought out of it by a shout from his left.

"They're pretty rad, right?" the short boy beside him smiled amidst stomping his foot and banging his head to the music. "They're actually friends of mine."

Gerard did enjoy the music, did enjoy the whole show of it all, even if he was slightly uncomfortable with the situation in general. He got a little cagey around so many people, which was at once a fact of his life and yet a symptom he never paid much mind, honestly. Most of the time he'd simply just rather be in his comfortable place, surrounded by the comforting things he liked. His drawing pads and different kinds of pens and pencils, his horror movie collection, his various posters and collectibles, most of which would probably get him made fun of by his schoolmates, but that wasn't a huge concern for him.

"Yeah...yeah they're great."He smiled back at the boy, slowly starting to let his own body move to the rhythm of the song.

Colored lights pulsed across the room manically, illuminating the sea of kids jumping and thrashing around to the band giving it their all on the stage.

Light would flash over the area Gerard was standing every so often and he found himself glancing over to watch as it lit up the tattooed boy's face, and that was...that was mesmerizing...

What?

He's just...he's really pretty, Gerard thought. When the light caught his eyes just like it did, every once in a while...it made his hazel eyes glow, almost going right through them, and they just sparkled.

It was fleeting, gone as quick as it had happened, as either the light had passed over them or the boy had broken its contact with the way he was banging his head around.

Suddenly feeling not exactly uncomfortable in the moment, the band rocking out, the lights cascading, the crowd of kids really feeling what was happening...Gerard found himself letting go of any maybe-reservations he had about the situation at hand, about his close proximity to so many others. He wasn't in his basement, no, he was here, in public for the world to see, and he just let his body take over and rock itself to the dirty beat. It wasn't exactly a conscious decision, just something that seemed to be happening.

And then, a splattering of crimson landed across the face of the boy to his left.

"Ah- fuck!"

The kid with the green mohawk didn't even notice it, how exactly his elbow had connected with Gerard's nose, and just kept on dancing, an aloof disaster of flying limbs as a look of shock spread across Gerard's now-bloody and panicked face.

"Ah shit, man." The tattooed boy turned to face Gerard and couldn't suppress a little giggle. There was something somehow endearing about the scene before his eyes, the stranger he was dancing next to who now stood completely still amongst the constant motion on the dance floor, his pointed little nose all bloodied, mouth hung open and eyebrows raised in shock and confusion as the blood ran warm down his face.

"This song's the last one they play, c'mon, I can take you back and get you cleaned up." And with that, he grabbed hold of Gerard's hand as he escorted him through the mass of people, Gerard with his bloody, confused face, feeling kind of surreal in the moment and maybe a little embarrassed. His cheeks were burning as he silently willed that nobody paid much attention to the mess that he was right then.  Nobody did, of course; this kind of thing wasn't exactly an atypical occurrence at shows. 

He allowed himself to be led by the boy through a door to the left of the stage and down a narrow hallway lined with doors, still attached at the hand. The shorter boy pushed through one to the right at the end of the hallway and into a small green room, Gerard trailing behind him. He let Gerard's hand drop as he entered the room, and Gerard stood just inside the door as he grabbed some paper towels from the counter and went over to the little sink to wet them.

"You can come in, man, it's cool," he said, turning and walking back towards Gerard.

He stopped just in front of him. "Here," he said, smirking at the sight before him as he held out the wad of wet paper towels.

Gerard took it and pressed it to his face, letting a small hiss escape his mouth because damn, this hurt like a son of a bitch. His face felt like it was imploding at the nose, and there was a sharp, swelling pressure right behind his eyebrows. The bass reverberated through the paper thin walls of the small club, throbbing hard in Gerard's head of messy black hair.

Returning to the sink, the boy began to clean up the fact that he still had smatterings of Gerard's blood on his own skin. "So, what's your name, bloody-face?" he asked with a slight turn of his head.

"Uh, Gerard."

"Well, Gerard, I usually know someone's name before we start engaging in blood rituals together, but...nice to meet you anyway, I'm Frank."

He finished cleaning himself up, patting the water residue off his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, and turned to face Gerard only to see the poor kid still standing dumbfounded in the doorway, his mouth still hung open a little.

"Hey, it's okay man, I'm just fuckin' around," Frank chuckled. He started toward Gerard and noticed a glazed look on the boy's face, his eyes seeming to not focus and, were they starting to roll back in his head a little?

Frank's smirk dropped from his lips. "Uh, hey, maybe you should sit down."

Putting a hand on Gerard's shoulder, he ushered him over to a dirty-looking green couch in the middle of the room. "There you go," he said as he helped the kid lower himself to the cushion before sitting next to him.

"You gonna be alright there? You look a little..."

"Yeah...yeah I'm...I'm just..."

The last song in the main room of the club ended in a cacophonous crescendo, hard thumping bass and punk rock death screams ricocheting around in Gerard's head. And with that, his eyes rolled back and then closed as his limp body fell hard right into Frank's lap.

* * * * *

"...was  the fucking tits, man..."  

"...time that James hit me in the head with one of his fucking sticks..."

Snippets of conversations filled his head. Who was talking?

Where was he?

As he began to come to, he realized the room was filled with loud, raucous conversation.

He shifted his head a little and slowly flicked his eyes open, and for a moment, the room fell silent.

Until one of the people, who Gerard was blinking into focus and recognizing as someone who was in the band that had been playing, broke the silence, feigning surprise at the sight before him. "Woah, what's goin' on Frankie, stealin' our groupies or somethin'?"

And the room erupted with laughter.

"Augh," Gerard let out a pained sigh, his hand reaching up to cradle his face.

He looked up and saw...Frank? What the fuck, had he...passed out on this guy's lap?

Gerard's pupils blew out and his cheeks flushed.

A breathy chuckle left Frank's nose and he rolled his eyes and smirked. "It's cool, man."

"It's aliiive!" someone howled out as Gerard helped himself up off of Frank's lap as quickly as he could, head still pounding, and sat himself upright on the couch, and the guys all burst out laughing again.

Gerard waved his hand, "Yeah, uh, sorry about...all that."

"Not the first time someone's taken a 'bow to the face at a Leathermouth show," said the singer of the band, seated in a chair opposite Gerard on the couch, with a maniacally big grin.

Gerard just swallowed, scanning around the room to all the pairs of eyes on him.

"You go to Pencey? Haven't seen you around."

"Nah, Belleville," Gerard replied.

"Mm," Frank smiled and nodded as the guys began resuming normal conversations with one another, starting to get up from their seats and grab the last of their equipment, ready to filter it out to the van.

Frank spoke to Gerard, "So hey, the guys and I usually go to Waffle House after shows, if you wanna join? You could probably use something to eat," before addressing the room, "You guys about ready to head out?"

*  *  *  *  *

Frank couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible for what had happened to Gerard that night. He couldn't have done anything to have stopped it from happening, but it was his friends who were the reason Gerard was there in the first place. And their teasing probably hadn't helped the embarrassment the kid no doubt had felt.

Gerard seemed like a cool person, Frank thought. They had discovered a mutual love of horror movies, among other things, at the restaurant. Gerard wore cool band shirts and a sweet leather jacket, and he obviously had good taste in music. And, well, he was pretty.

The two boys had exchanged numbers that night after the show. "Yeah, we should hang again, we play shows pretty often, so you know, if you wanna add on to that black eye..." one of the guys in the band had joked when Frank had asked Gerard if he could put his number in his phone.

Over the next few weeks, as Gerard's bruised and swollen face worked on healing, the two boys became friends.

It seemed like a whirlwind. But a good kind of one.

The kind where you've met someone new and are in the midst of finding out  who they are, finding out all about them as you're increasingly  assimilated into their world and them into yours.

Though they lived a town over from one another and went to different high schools, it was a small distance to traverse, and they found themselves texting each other and hanging out after school increasingly often.

* * * * *

Gerard's phone vibrated next to him on his desk. He finished the line he was tracing and set down his pencil, diverting his attention from it to the text message notification on his phone.

Call me pls?

His hand went up to rub at his eyes, to rub away the sleep that was forming in the corners as he thought about whether to send back a text or-

Or can I call you?

Another text came through as he picked up his phone, unlocking it and about to type out a response when-

The phone suddenly sprang to life in a mess of light and sound, marring the otherwise quiet ambiance of his room.

"Frank?" He answered.

"Gerard, hey... Um, I'm sorry if I'm bothering you, I just..." Frank trailed off with a sigh, and Gerard could hear desperation in his voice.

Something was wrong.

"Do you think- Uh...would I be able to stay at your place tonight?"

__________

Whew! So concludes Chapter 1 of my very first fanfiction. Wow.

I'd originally intended to write this as a oneshot, but it tends to gather steam quickly as I put it to paper, so to speak, so as of now it's going to be a short story, and I'm excited about that! It may end up turning into a not-so-short story? I'm not sure at this point so I'm just going to ride the wave.

I know it's just an awkward little basement Frerard, but I'm a real sucker for that archetype. I think about this story a lot in my own head, and this is basically just me turning the scenes in my head into words, just writing what I want to read.

And on that note, yes, there will be smut.

I have a lot of this story fleshed out already and I'm really excited to see these characters explore their feelings.

(You'll notice I've taken some liberties seeing as this is an AU; I know, for instance, Leathermouth isn't "punk rock," but it just is in the story in my mind, etc..)

(Also, can we just please ignore that the cover for this story looks like it was made by a small child. It and the description are shit rn, I know. I have a cover idea, I just need to sort out Photoshop on my main computer. I just needed to finally get this up because it's been driving me crazy.)

Thank you so much for reading, and I'd love to hear any feedback anyone has on the first chapter!

xoNJ