fic: Steps (Gerard/Lyn-z)
Steps
Gerard/Lyn-z (mentions of Mikey/Alicia and Frank/Jamia), 2021 words, PG-13
Many thanks to turnyourankle for the beta.
Notes: I wrote this one ages ago. In May, I think, and just failed to post it sooner. For the sake of this fic, let's all pretend Gerard and Lyn-z have a house in Jersey, okay? Okay!
Summary: "I'ma go home and do the married thing." - Gerard Way (In an interview. I can't remember which one right now D:)
Gerard eats breakfast at the kitchen table after pulling on a pair of sweatpants and an old well-loved Dawn of the Dead t-shirt that at some point probably belonged to Ray, maybe Frank. Finders keepers always worked as a general rule, ever since the beginning.
Lyn smiles as she pours coffee from the pot that Gerard’s placed on a handful of coasters on the table. They’re all souvenirs from around the world, vintage pinups and different beer labels, mostly from the van days when every new thing - every new place - felt important to press into memory. Frank didn’t collect coasters much. He got tattoos instead.
Lyn’s leg curls around Gerard’s under the table, unpracticed but casual, and she clinks her cup against his, intentionally, catching his eye.
The table is made of wood, and it still carries that new smell Gerard didn’t realize he liked so much until now. They’re in the middle of remodeling the kitchen, and plaster gathers in corners like clumps of fucked up snow.
==
==
The concept of mowing the lawn is new to both. Gerard tells Lyn she could just as well do the work because they are not slaves to gender roles, but he’s thrilled when she makes a ‘yeah right, buddy, dream on’ face and makes him try it out instead.
It turns out that he sucks at it. The mower is old school, hard to start up as you have to pull that thing attached to that other thing and do it with fast, determined moves.
“I think it knows you’re afraid of it. Don’t let it see your fear,” Lyn observes from the garden swing. She’s wearing his sunglasses and her own Mikey Fuckin Way t-shirt, boyshorts that show less skin than the skirts she wears on stage.
Gerard gives her a shit-eating grin, wipes sweat from his face. It feels like Warped Tour in their backyard, sweltering heat and the smell of hotdogs wafting from somewhere close by. “I’m not fuckin’fraid of this motherfucker.” He kicks the mower just to prove his point, just to show her, and lets out a surprised yelp when it coughs up into a steady hum.
==
==
Mikey visits of course.
He stumbles on excess tiles and plaster in the kitchen, then makes accusatory faces at Gerard while Alicia and Lyn are laughing in the living room totally oblivious. Gerard likes that sound. It’s sort of different at home on a Saturday afternoon than on the road. It tugs at his chest and he wishes he could record it, but knows it would lose something important in the process.
==
==
They make shapes on the bedroom walls when they move, blinds closed, that bulb they painted orange cascading warm light into the room; skin on skin. Her tattoos still manage to surprise him: the way the yellow curves, and the broken bone of her rooster he hadn’t really noticed before.
He makes her shudder on top of him; her thighs shake as he brushes the beginning of hip with his knuckles, then spreads his fingers on her belly, presses them against the tattoo there.
Later, she drops her head in the negative space of his neck on the pillow and smiles bonelessly.
==
==
Gerard stares at the tiling above the sink every time he’s wiping the dishes (that got old very fast), contemplates on colors and designs that could be there if he was able to rearrange his thoughts well enough to figure out what it needs. Lyn always says, Go visit Frankie, you have too much time on your hands, like Frank hadn’t been there just yesterday, watching monster movies and falling asleep on the depression of Lyn’s collarbone.
He calls Bob about it, asks what he thinks would be the best way to dismantle the old tiling. Bob grunts, then prohibits Gerard to touch any tools he might have purchased in the first flush of home life.
Gerard hands Lyn the phone on Bob’s orders, grumbles because he knows Bob will lecture about the importance of keeping Gerard away from hammers and drills under all circumstances and no matter how well he reasons his cause.
He thinks about consulting Ray before he remembers that Ray and Krista are currently two vacationers in Malta, then entertains himself with the image of Ray in a flower shirt and khaki shorts, humidity doing weird things to his hair.
==
==
The studio is what attracts Gerard and Lyn the most in their home.
There are two drafting tables in the middle that Lyn has set just so that they sit opposite to each other, the tops of the table ends pressed together.
He likes to watch her when she draws, the look she gets on her face he can only see in the studio. He wonders if it’s like that to her as well.
The studio is pretty empty still, white walls and half-finished canvases, some Umbrella sketches here and there, and her quirky little worlds. He adds expressive marks on paper, and after glancing at Lyn’s work, tries to put more emotion into his own.
==
==
He takes up photographing. His camera has been collecting dust ever since the beginning of the Black Parade tour, but now feels like a good time to start again.
Most people would photograph the times not spent at home, trips abroad or that time when the circus came in town, full of color and life.
Gerard photographs Lyn when she’s watching tv in the evening, holes in her socks and her face naked and beautiful. She’s just come home from playing a couple of shows in Europe, and she looks like she could sleep for days.
He photographs the way Jamia’s housewarming plant struggles to stay alive on the windowsill, and how much deeper all the colors seem after rain.
He photographs Mikey during WWE’s RAW, and insists Ray stand under the bright kitchen light because he has never seen him so tan before, not even on summer tours. He tries different tricks with his digital camera, but he still likes that simple polaroid of Frank and Jamia best, the one where they’re caught off-guard in the kitchen doorway, Jamia’s wrist curled so that her fingers can pet the back of Frank’s head as Frank nuzzles his face into the spot behind her ear.
==
==
Frank calls him about a riff he came up with, and brings the dogs with when he comes. The real reason is that Jamia’s visiting relatives, and Frank doesn’t know how to function alone anymore. Gerard’s not a stranger to that feeling either.
They talk about where they would like to tour next while Gerard shows him some of the concepts he’s been fiddling with. He whispers the could-be name of their next album, smiles when Frank pumps his fist in the air.
He tells Frank how the house still feels too big sometimes, how he gets irrationally scared whenever he wanders around the place at night, even if he knows all the rooms like the back of is hand, and there’s no chance for him to get lost, that it’s just a house.
Frank sets up a tent in the living room the same way his mom did when Frank was just a kid, using only blankets and chairs as building material. They spend the evening inside the small space, smoking and chatting, while Lyn sits with the dogs on the couch. She reprimands them half-heartedly when they prank call Bob for the fifth time that night, but agrees when they say Bob should visit from Chicago. They all miss him terribly.
Frank’s anxiously waiting for new shows to play, chats with kids after them, and Gerard’s mouth tugs up when Frank’s fingers tap ghost riffs on Gerard’s forearm without him even noticing he’s doing it.
Lyn leans down to kiss Gerard on the mouth, Frank on the corner of his eye, asks, “You staying the night?” before she hoists Mama up in her arms and goes to bed, doesn’t even wait to hear Frank’s reply.
==
==
What Gerard likes the most is the abnormality of what most people would call ‘just another boring day at home’. It took a while for him to stop feeling the rocking of the bus in his body, and he constantly learns new things about himself he never knew were there.
He tries to use the waffle iron - just for the hell of it - and realizes it doesn’t take a genius to make it work even if Brian had said otherwise and thus refused to let them have one on the bus. Same goes with the ice cream machine.
He doesn’t try to cook real food though, he knows he’s a disaster in the kitchen, and Lyn makes amazing lasagna he could eat every day for the rest of his life.
“You can’t make real Italian home food by following the recipe down to the letter,” she likes to say with her palm over Gerard’s heart. “It should come from here, if it ever comes from anywhere.”
==
==
He likes to watch the curve of their hands when it’s almost dark and quiet. He doesn’t know how long he will be able to enjoy the peace, but he doesn’t want to hurry it away, it’s a nice feeling.
The problem is that sometimes he feels like he’s living someone else’s life when he’s home, like his mind hasn’t grasped at the idea that this could be part of him as well. That he could just as well be Gerard The Homedweller than Gerard The Rockstar. And if he doesn’t dare say this to Lyn it’s just because how happy she looks when she’s home, like it’s the best place to be and she’d never want to leave. What he doesn’t really think is how little she gets to be home these days, and how much he does.
Sometimes he gets a wave of envy when she’s packing her bags, and he knows he’ll want to be on the road more than he wants to stay at home. He wonders if maybe he likes Gerard The Rockstar more than Gerard The Homedweller after all.
The feeling’s also there when Frank’s talking about the shows he’ll play with his other bands, or when Bob calls to say that dude, he saw Fall Out Boy back home in Chicago, and Patrick was talking about constantly coming up with new stuff for next albums even if Pete was mostly preoccupied with the idea of saving kids from becoming MTV whores by infiltrating the network. Bob huffs a laugh there, and Gerard doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s rolling his eyes.
==
==
“You don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to tour with your friends, you know,” Lyn says one evening out of the blue.
“Bwah?” Gerard asks. He’s in the middle of building a motherfucking Eiffel tower from matches and ice cream sticks. He needs to buy more of those raspberry popsicles if he ever wants to get this shit done.
She gives him a patient look, and sits down next to him on the couch, presses a palm between his shoulder blades. “I like touring, too. I’d go crazy if I couldn’t.”
“Oh. Um, yeah-“
“Yeah. So like, whenever you guys feel ready, you should hit the road again. I’ll miss you, but it just means that we’re doing this right, y’know?”
Gerard kind of falls for her all over again.
He leans his head against Lyn’s and thinks, soon, goes back to his mini Eiffel tower after that.
Gerard/Lyn-z (mentions of Mikey/Alicia and Frank/Jamia), 2021 words, PG-13
Many thanks to turnyourankle for the beta.
Notes: I wrote this one ages ago. In May, I think, and just failed to post it sooner. For the sake of this fic, let's all pretend Gerard and Lyn-z have a house in Jersey, okay? Okay!
Summary: "I'ma go home and do the married thing." - Gerard Way (In an interview. I can't remember which one right now D:)
Gerard eats breakfast at the kitchen table after pulling on a pair of sweatpants and an old well-loved Dawn of the Dead t-shirt that at some point probably belonged to Ray, maybe Frank. Finders keepers always worked as a general rule, ever since the beginning.
Lyn smiles as she pours coffee from the pot that Gerard’s placed on a handful of coasters on the table. They’re all souvenirs from around the world, vintage pinups and different beer labels, mostly from the van days when every new thing - every new place - felt important to press into memory. Frank didn’t collect coasters much. He got tattoos instead.
Lyn’s leg curls around Gerard’s under the table, unpracticed but casual, and she clinks her cup against his, intentionally, catching his eye.
The table is made of wood, and it still carries that new smell Gerard didn’t realize he liked so much until now. They’re in the middle of remodeling the kitchen, and plaster gathers in corners like clumps of fucked up snow.
==
==
The concept of mowing the lawn is new to both. Gerard tells Lyn she could just as well do the work because they are not slaves to gender roles, but he’s thrilled when she makes a ‘yeah right, buddy, dream on’ face and makes him try it out instead.
It turns out that he sucks at it. The mower is old school, hard to start up as you have to pull that thing attached to that other thing and do it with fast, determined moves.
“I think it knows you’re afraid of it. Don’t let it see your fear,” Lyn observes from the garden swing. She’s wearing his sunglasses and her own Mikey Fuckin Way t-shirt, boyshorts that show less skin than the skirts she wears on stage.
Gerard gives her a shit-eating grin, wipes sweat from his face. It feels like Warped Tour in their backyard, sweltering heat and the smell of hotdogs wafting from somewhere close by. “I’m not fuckin’fraid of this motherfucker.” He kicks the mower just to prove his point, just to show her, and lets out a surprised yelp when it coughs up into a steady hum.
==
==
Mikey visits of course.
He stumbles on excess tiles and plaster in the kitchen, then makes accusatory faces at Gerard while Alicia and Lyn are laughing in the living room totally oblivious. Gerard likes that sound. It’s sort of different at home on a Saturday afternoon than on the road. It tugs at his chest and he wishes he could record it, but knows it would lose something important in the process.
==
==
They make shapes on the bedroom walls when they move, blinds closed, that bulb they painted orange cascading warm light into the room; skin on skin. Her tattoos still manage to surprise him: the way the yellow curves, and the broken bone of her rooster he hadn’t really noticed before.
He makes her shudder on top of him; her thighs shake as he brushes the beginning of hip with his knuckles, then spreads his fingers on her belly, presses them against the tattoo there.
Later, she drops her head in the negative space of his neck on the pillow and smiles bonelessly.
==
==
Gerard stares at the tiling above the sink every time he’s wiping the dishes (that got old very fast), contemplates on colors and designs that could be there if he was able to rearrange his thoughts well enough to figure out what it needs. Lyn always says, Go visit Frankie, you have too much time on your hands, like Frank hadn’t been there just yesterday, watching monster movies and falling asleep on the depression of Lyn’s collarbone.
He calls Bob about it, asks what he thinks would be the best way to dismantle the old tiling. Bob grunts, then prohibits Gerard to touch any tools he might have purchased in the first flush of home life.
Gerard hands Lyn the phone on Bob’s orders, grumbles because he knows Bob will lecture about the importance of keeping Gerard away from hammers and drills under all circumstances and no matter how well he reasons his cause.
He thinks about consulting Ray before he remembers that Ray and Krista are currently two vacationers in Malta, then entertains himself with the image of Ray in a flower shirt and khaki shorts, humidity doing weird things to his hair.
==
==
The studio is what attracts Gerard and Lyn the most in their home.
There are two drafting tables in the middle that Lyn has set just so that they sit opposite to each other, the tops of the table ends pressed together.
He likes to watch her when she draws, the look she gets on her face he can only see in the studio. He wonders if it’s like that to her as well.
The studio is pretty empty still, white walls and half-finished canvases, some Umbrella sketches here and there, and her quirky little worlds. He adds expressive marks on paper, and after glancing at Lyn’s work, tries to put more emotion into his own.
==
==
He takes up photographing. His camera has been collecting dust ever since the beginning of the Black Parade tour, but now feels like a good time to start again.
Most people would photograph the times not spent at home, trips abroad or that time when the circus came in town, full of color and life.
Gerard photographs Lyn when she’s watching tv in the evening, holes in her socks and her face naked and beautiful. She’s just come home from playing a couple of shows in Europe, and she looks like she could sleep for days.
He photographs the way Jamia’s housewarming plant struggles to stay alive on the windowsill, and how much deeper all the colors seem after rain.
He photographs Mikey during WWE’s RAW, and insists Ray stand under the bright kitchen light because he has never seen him so tan before, not even on summer tours. He tries different tricks with his digital camera, but he still likes that simple polaroid of Frank and Jamia best, the one where they’re caught off-guard in the kitchen doorway, Jamia’s wrist curled so that her fingers can pet the back of Frank’s head as Frank nuzzles his face into the spot behind her ear.
==
==
Frank calls him about a riff he came up with, and brings the dogs with when he comes. The real reason is that Jamia’s visiting relatives, and Frank doesn’t know how to function alone anymore. Gerard’s not a stranger to that feeling either.
They talk about where they would like to tour next while Gerard shows him some of the concepts he’s been fiddling with. He whispers the could-be name of their next album, smiles when Frank pumps his fist in the air.
He tells Frank how the house still feels too big sometimes, how he gets irrationally scared whenever he wanders around the place at night, even if he knows all the rooms like the back of is hand, and there’s no chance for him to get lost, that it’s just a house.
Frank sets up a tent in the living room the same way his mom did when Frank was just a kid, using only blankets and chairs as building material. They spend the evening inside the small space, smoking and chatting, while Lyn sits with the dogs on the couch. She reprimands them half-heartedly when they prank call Bob for the fifth time that night, but agrees when they say Bob should visit from Chicago. They all miss him terribly.
Frank’s anxiously waiting for new shows to play, chats with kids after them, and Gerard’s mouth tugs up when Frank’s fingers tap ghost riffs on Gerard’s forearm without him even noticing he’s doing it.
Lyn leans down to kiss Gerard on the mouth, Frank on the corner of his eye, asks, “You staying the night?” before she hoists Mama up in her arms and goes to bed, doesn’t even wait to hear Frank’s reply.
==
==
What Gerard likes the most is the abnormality of what most people would call ‘just another boring day at home’. It took a while for him to stop feeling the rocking of the bus in his body, and he constantly learns new things about himself he never knew were there.
He tries to use the waffle iron - just for the hell of it - and realizes it doesn’t take a genius to make it work even if Brian had said otherwise and thus refused to let them have one on the bus. Same goes with the ice cream machine.
He doesn’t try to cook real food though, he knows he’s a disaster in the kitchen, and Lyn makes amazing lasagna he could eat every day for the rest of his life.
“You can’t make real Italian home food by following the recipe down to the letter,” she likes to say with her palm over Gerard’s heart. “It should come from here, if it ever comes from anywhere.”
==
==
He likes to watch the curve of their hands when it’s almost dark and quiet. He doesn’t know how long he will be able to enjoy the peace, but he doesn’t want to hurry it away, it’s a nice feeling.
The problem is that sometimes he feels like he’s living someone else’s life when he’s home, like his mind hasn’t grasped at the idea that this could be part of him as well. That he could just as well be Gerard The Homedweller than Gerard The Rockstar. And if he doesn’t dare say this to Lyn it’s just because how happy she looks when she’s home, like it’s the best place to be and she’d never want to leave. What he doesn’t really think is how little she gets to be home these days, and how much he does.
Sometimes he gets a wave of envy when she’s packing her bags, and he knows he’ll want to be on the road more than he wants to stay at home. He wonders if maybe he likes Gerard The Rockstar more than Gerard The Homedweller after all.
The feeling’s also there when Frank’s talking about the shows he’ll play with his other bands, or when Bob calls to say that dude, he saw Fall Out Boy back home in Chicago, and Patrick was talking about constantly coming up with new stuff for next albums even if Pete was mostly preoccupied with the idea of saving kids from becoming MTV whores by infiltrating the network. Bob huffs a laugh there, and Gerard doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s rolling his eyes.
==
==
“You don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to tour with your friends, you know,” Lyn says one evening out of the blue.
“Bwah?” Gerard asks. He’s in the middle of building a motherfucking Eiffel tower from matches and ice cream sticks. He needs to buy more of those raspberry popsicles if he ever wants to get this shit done.
She gives him a patient look, and sits down next to him on the couch, presses a palm between his shoulder blades. “I like touring, too. I’d go crazy if I couldn’t.”
“Oh. Um, yeah-“
“Yeah. So like, whenever you guys feel ready, you should hit the road again. I’ll miss you, but it just means that we’re doing this right, y’know?”
Gerard kind of falls for her all over again.
He leans his head against Lyn’s and thinks, soon, goes back to his mini Eiffel tower after that.