Current location:	my flat
Current mood:	cold
Current music:	Brand New - Luca
Entry tags:	fiction, frank iero, gerard way, mcr, pg13, time travel

Time travel
Author: inpurity
Title: Time travel
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: PG13
Fandom: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Dedication: To the ever so lovely x_missdarko_x for endless support, and for being absolutely wonderful.
Summary: Frank wishes he could change the past, but Gerard reminds him about how good the present really is.
Word Count: 1,119
Disclaimer:This is a work of fiction, not written for profit. I claim no connection with any member of MCR their families or friends. The events hereby narrated are absolutely false and are not meant to reflect the person's private life. No harm, misrepresentation, libel, malice or copyright infringement is intended. At no time is this meant to be construed as reality.



The night Frank shows up at Gerard’s steps it’s raining; like in a Dickens’ story, where the elements, inevitably, mirror the characters’ emotions.
Frank is smoking, but the cherry at the end of his Marlboro stutters to nothing the moment Gerard opens the door.

“Hey.”

Frank drips water on the polished wooden floor of the hallway, and, as he bends over to untie his shoes, Gerard can see the lines of his ribs shredding the ink on his skin.
Frank looks gaunt, worn thin, so thin that Gerard can read the blood in his veins like red ink across an essay where all the words are wrong.

Gerard makes coffee but doesn’t press for an explanation. He busies himself until the water hitting the windows is the only noise in the house, until Frank’s immobility cuts a square of perfect darkness beside the French doors.

“You’re shaking.”

“She’s pregnant.”

Gerard watches as the rain falls.
March is just the ghost of spring, and his hands shake around the cup he’s holding, heat seeping through the planes of his skin, hot, too hot, scaring a rush of fearful blood.

Frank presses his forehead against the glass, the slick of his hair smearing an oily smudge on the surface of the window.

“I’ve always wanted children. Always.”

“I know.”

Frank turns slowly, Gerard’s words sharp on the ragged surface of his evident pain.

“I’m sorry.”

Gerard doesn’t ask for an explanation, he doesn’t need to.
He knows. He has always known.
That’s why he can’t bear any grudge.
That’s why there’s no condemnation in his eyes.

“You don’t have to be. Never.”

He pushes the coffee mug in Frank’s hands and walks him to the sofa; a blanket is spread over it, proof that Gerard still can’t bring himself to sleep in the bedroom.
Gerard moves it away so Frank can sit down, but Frank holds one of the frayed corners and motions for Gerard to sit beside him, and then covers both of them, the dampness of his clothes making a frigid shield against the fever burning in his blood.

“Elena knitted this.”

“She did.”

Gerard knows the geometry of Frank’s body and they find each under the cover, chasing a time when Elena was still alive, the sharp green of her eyes a bright mirror to Gerard’s mossy ones.

“I remember when she met me for the first time.”

Gerard’s smile is laced with a bitter melancholia, and not just because he misses her, but because Frank is travelling back in time because he can’t fix the present and that hurts more than the memory of all that he has lost.

“She called you trouble.”

“I took it as a badge of honour.”

“That’s how she meant it.”

“Gee, remember when…” But Frank doesn’t get to finish his question, because Gerard is looking at him, eyes dulled by a daily repetition of pain he is not used to. Yet.
Of course Gerard remembers, he remembers everything, even the days where the fabric of his reality was woven in drugs and alcohol.

He remembers.

“Frankie, we can’t.”

Frank’s mouth is a sinuous curve of bitterness.

“Not without a Delorean, right?”

Gerard touches Frank under the blanket, the heated wetness of his shirt slip sliding under Gerard’s fingers.

“Not even with a Delorean.”

Frank makes a noise that is almost a sob, words lodged in his throat, years worth of words. An entire vocabulary of love he never learned how to spell.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes, you do. You’ll go home; you will get out of those wet clothes, lie in bed with her and tell her how happy you are. How fucking fantastic it is that you are finally gonna have a kid. You’ll tell Jamia how much you love her, and how much you will love the baby. Because that’s the truth. Because you love her, and you already love your kid, Frankie.”

Part of Frank wants to be able to tell Gerard that he’s wrong, that he doesn’t want a child, that he doesn’t love Jamia. But he can’t, because he does love her, he does want the child. His child, something, someone that is going to be his. His and Jamia’s.

“I wish you were wrong, Gee. Don’t you wish you were wrong?”

Gerard shakes his head, his hair, cut short, almost like a child, for the first time in ages is its natural colour, a dark, opaque brown, warm like oak wood.

“No. Because if I was wrong, you wouldn’t be you, and I fell I love with you. This version of you. I fell in love with a man who would kill for his family, who is capable of this kind of love.”

Frank, who will turn thirty in few months, has still the same soft mouth he had when they met so many years ago. The same slanted smile, the same warmth. Those things will never change, and it’s what makes Gerard hold on, it’s what makes him hopeful that all this love will never be wasted.

“Don’t you ever wish… don’t you ever think about how things would have been if I- if we had met first? If I had had a bit more courage?”

Gerard does, of course he does, but what good would he do him or Frank? Reality is that Jamia was already there when they met, and it is not a matter of courage, it’s a matter of needs, a matter of necessity.

Frank needs her.
He needs her more than he needs Gerard.

Gerard pulls Frank closer, the clothes damp under the pads of his fingers, shaping the lines of Frank’s shoulders with a long, lingering caress.
When he speaks is with his mouth pressed to Frank’s temple, his own brand of cowardice making it impossible to look Frank in the eyes.

“I think about the first time I saw you. I think about the first time we got drunk together. The first gig, the first lines of your guitar ringing in my head. I think about waking up on a plane from Japan and seeing your face, knowing you were still there, even after I almost got too lost to come back. I think about kissing you, knowing the taste of your mouth, the urgency of your breath. I think about saying goodbye, about getting married, about loving Lyn just too little for her to stay. I think about watching you loving Jamia, loving her so much, enough to build a life and a family. I think about you and how lucky I am to love you. Even like this.”

Frank drives home after the rain has stopped; the streets slicked with oily rainbows.