Fic: Baby, I Love You - 1/1 - Schmoop Bingo - R
Title: Baby, I Love You
Author: roxy_palace
Fandom: Bandom
Pairing: Frank/Gerard
Rating: R - for swears and red hot man love.
Warning: Nada, Enchilada
Disclaimer: No offence intended nor ownership implied
Challenge: Schmoop Bingo!
Prompt: Pregnancy
Word count: 8104
AN: This fic is a standalone, but part of an AU where Frank and Gee run Skeleton Crew together, MCR never existed and they’re just awesome dudes from NJ. All the fic from the Schmoop Bingo card I drew will be in this ‘verse. Other fic in this ‘verse are linked from here. Mini beta by the endlessly inspiring anna_unfolding , without whom I would be hopelessly lost. grosse bises, beautiful girl.
Summary:
******
They recognise her as soon as they see her, sitting in a booth at the back of the diner, because the agency wasn’t kidding around - the girl looks like she could be Gerard’s sister.
“Holy shit, baby,” says Frank clutching Gerard’s arm. “Was your dad in the Navy or something?”
“Shut up, Frank,” Gerard hisses as they came up to the table. But Frank’s got a point. The resemblance is uncanny.
“Hi, Mona? Um...Hi?” Gerard stumbles over the words as she looks up at him. He’s both relieved and disappointed to see her eyes are dark brown and nothing like his at all.
But, she does have sooty lashes and pale, cartridge paper coloured skin - her cheeks have a rosy tint to them - and her hair is a dark chocolate colour. Her nose is narrow and sharp. Gerard blinks.
“Gerard? Frank?” The young woman says, standing a little. Her accent is impossible not to notice with the r’s rolling off her tongue like their names are a foreign language. Gerard grins. He glances at Frank who is making doe eyes like someone just clocked him on the head. Gerard figures his hubby’s ensorcelled too.
“Yes! Hi! I’m Gerard and this is my husband, Frank.”
“Frank!” Squeaks Frank, sticking out his hand. “Frank and Gerard. That’s us. Me and him. And me! Um...Hi!”
Gerard just manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes and flicking Frank in the ear. He’s pretty sure that would be exactly the wrong impression to make.
Mona frowns, but she’s still smiling and Gerard thinks it’s a miracle she doesn’t just pack up her stuff - she has a book, crack spined , on the table next to her coffee - and high tail it out of there. “So glad to meet you, Frank... Gerard. I have heard so much about you.”
“Oh no...” says Frank his smile fading.
“All good, Mr Iero! All good!” She clasps Frank’s hand and Gerard watches, bemused, as the blush spreads across Frank’s nose.
Frank slips into the booth opposite Mona, Gerard sits next to him. And Gerard is so relieved at Frank’s reaction to this girl. She’s the fifth woman they’ve met, but it’s the first time Frank has been...Frank and not a complete Jackass.
“Thank you, thank you for meeting us. I don’t...They told us it was just a preliminary thing, you know, to see how we get on and everything...I don’t really...” Gerard stumbles over his words.
“Yeah, we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing,” chimes Frank. “We were kind of hoping you would.”
She laughs out loud as Gerard just looks at his husband incredulously. “Frank,” he says, trying to imbue the word with as much ‘shut up, for the love of God’ as he can.
But Mona is nodding and smiling. “I have a clue,” she says. “First, I tell you about myself, why I’m on the programme, what I do with myself. Etcetera. Then you tell me why you are on the programme, what you do with yourselves. Yes?”
They nod in unison.
“And then you tell me why I should let you get me pregnant.”
The waitress, who has only just walked up to their table, squeaks and drops her note pad. “Um...I’ll give y’all another couple of minutes,” she says, clearly horrified at what she’s just over heard.
“Oh, um...just, God...” Gerard covers his face with his hand as Frank laughs out loud.
“Nah, we’re good. Just coffee please....Valerie,” says Frank, reading the poor waitress’s name badge. “Two cups, thanks!”
Mona laughs again. She has a good laugh; warm and encouraging. Gerard likes the sound, could stand hearing it for the rest of his life.
“Oops!” she says, covering her mouth with her hand.
*
They’re having a baby. Gerard Way and Frank Iero are going to be dads.
At least that’s the plan, or it was until they started meeting potential surrogates and Frank turned into...Dadzilla. If Gerard didn’t find it kind of funny, and pretty adorable, he’d be freaking out. But Frank wants this. He really, wants this.
And Gerard? Well, there’s never been anything Frank wanted that Gerard didn’t want to give him.
So they found an agency that put surrogates in touch with childless couples and signed up.
But a couple of weeks later, when they met the first candidate at a cafe near the agency, the first words out of Frank mouth were: “Do you or any of your family vote Republican, own a gun or think Sarah Palin is ‘neat’?”
Needless to say, it had been all downhill from there.
“That’s just the way I roll, baby. You know that,” Frank had said five meetings later. “I get a feel for someone straight away and if I don’t like them...” He’d made a cutting motion across his throat.
Gerard had rolled his eyes at him that time. Unrestrainedly.
“Gillian,” he’d asked. “What was wrong with Gillian? She had a Phd in bioengineering from MIT, for crying out loud.”
“Her eyes were too close together,” said frank, squinting. “My nonna always said that a woman like that will steal your silverware.”
“Gillian drove a lotus, Frank. I was planning on stealing her silverware.”
“Whatever.” Frank said unfazed.
“Ok then, Helen. She was...”
“Six foot three, Gerard. Do you want my own child to give me short man complex?” Frank said in a huff, with his hands on his hips and his lips pursed.
Good point, thought Gerard. He managed not to say that between the two of them , any child they had would probably come out just right. It wouldn’t help the situation any.
“Ruth?” Gerard forged on. He was on the verge of figuring out what the hell Frank’s problem was. He wasn’t going to let up.
“Too...Ruthless. You could tell. ”
If there was something going on Frank couldn’t or wouldn’t articulate it. Frank was just making excuses. Crazy assed excuses. “Fiona?” Gerard asked.
“She smelled of soup.”
“You are making this shit up.”
“Beef and onions. With cheese,” said Frank with a great deal of pity for poor Fiona’s soupy condition.
“Valerie?”
“Wanted to have actual sex. Like, she wanted me. Ew.”
Gerard had given up then. Valerie had not wanted to have actual sex with Frank. Valerie was a lesbian.
But Frank had his ways, and his ways were... usually a fucking mystery to Gerard. So, he’d let it go.
Someone would come along, or she wouldn’t. As long as they had each other, it didn’t matter.
Although, there was a twinge, sometimes, deep in his chest - just behind his heart - that said ‘How long? How long will we have to wait?’ And it always surprised Gerard.
He didn’t even realise how much he wanted to meet Frank’s future child, to be a dad himself and find out what that’s like.
He wanted so much to give that to Frank, an only child of divorced parents, who Gerard was pretty sure had no idea how loudly he telegraphed his desire to have a family of his own.
Gerard felt it to his core, in the way Frank loved his family - Mikey and their parents - in the way he claimed Mikey as a brother of his own.
So the waiting seemed hard. It seemed endless.
But then the agency had called and described Mona.
“Let’s meet her,” Frank had said, much to Gerard’s delight and surprise . “She sounds interesting.”
And the next thing they knew they were here, in a diner with Mona from Naples who maybe, might, perhaps let them get her pregnant.
The waitress brings coffee and Mona begins to talk about herself.
“I’m a student. I study at Columbia. Journalism. It is a good school, yes? The best, I think. Anyway, it’s also expensive, so...surrogate.” She shrugs as if carrying someone else’s child for nine months and then giving it away and never seeing it again is the most obvious solution to student debt ever.
They discuss the money, how it will help her. She says she’s going back to Italy to work for CNN Europe, she hopes, and one day would like to be an anchor woman.
“That’s great, really...but...” Gerard says, mentally feeling his way towards the question he wants to ask - feels he must ask if they’re going to do this. He’s aware that she’s dealing with them in her second language. He doesn’t want to screw it up.
“I think what Gee is trying to say is,” says Frank looking at him pointedly. “Are you going to be okay giving us your baby when the time comes.”
Gerard winces. He’d hoped Frank’s general lack of tact would be less pronounced in the presence of a surrogate he actually likes this time, someone who could potentially give them something so incredibly precious. But it seems that, no, Frank is Frank. Beautiful, fertile, Italian girls or no.
Mona sighs and nods and gives them an appraising look.
“I thought, when I first heard the idea, no one can do this,” she says, flipping a lock of her heavy hair over her shoulder. “It’s too hard. But, that’s because I was thinking of giving up my baby.”
She shakes her head and sips her coffee.
“This - if we do it - this is not my baby. This is you and you,” she says pointing at them. “I’m just...oven for your bun. Yes? Your bun. Not mine.” She smiles.
Gerard looks at Frank to see his eyes shining.
“Yeah,” Frank sighs and picks up Gerard’s hand. “Our bun.”
They drink their coffee and Mona asks them about their jobs, the label. She asks them how they met - Gerard gives her a much edited version which Frank giggles through like an infant high on cherry cola. She seems delighted with their description of the house on Maple Lane where they live - the high moulded ceilings, the wooden floors, the long, deep veranda with the swing seat.
“If you like, when it’s time,” Gerard says. “If you say yes, I mean - we have a room for you. Only if you want...” Gerard stumbles over it, trying not to say it’s what he wants, to be there, when the time comes...if it ever does.
“We’d like that, if you’d come and stay,” says Frank, bold as brass.
Mona smiles. “I’d like that too, I think.”
After an hour Mona says she has to get going to class. Frank immediately pays for her coffee and leans over the table to give her a hug. “It was so great meeting you. So great. Thank you so much.”
“Niente, Franco!” she says hugging him back. And Gerard can’t believe Frank actually giggles. If it wasn’t so cute, it’d be embarrassing.
They leave the booth and Mona touches his arm gently. “I’ll let the agency know what I decide, Gee,” She smiles. “But, I like you. Okay?”
“Okay,” he says back, and Gerard is a little overwhelmed at how excited it makes him feel.
As she leaves the diner, Gerard and Frank slip back into the booth.
“We’re having a bambino,” whispers Frank, sounding full of awe.
“I think you’re right,” says Gerard back.
*
Two weeks later they get a call from the agency saying Mona has agreed to be their surrogate and that’s the point when the fun really begins.
Gerard notices that Frank doesn’t exactly freak out, but his usual levels of twitchy excitement seem to shoot through the roof. It only gets worse as the day booked for him to go into the clinic and deliver his end of the baby making bargain inches closer.
Gerard does everything he can to keep him calm, and seriously, his jaw is starting to get RSI from all the impromptu blow jobs he’s been giving. Not to mention his knees are by now in open revolt. But he wants Frank to enjoy this time. That’s a thought that always makes me smirk. Frank’s enjoying it all right. But it’s not making much of a dent in his anxiety.
One afternoon, Gerard is concertina’ed under Frank’s desk at the label praying to God no one needs to see either of them for a while as he swallows Frank down again, when Frank grabs a handful of his hair and just yanks on it.
“What the ever loving Fuck!” Gerard yells the second he can struggle out from under the desk. “That fucking hurt!”
“Oh God, Gee. God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry baby,” says Frank reaching for Gerard and pulling him down into his lap. “I didn’t mean to...I’m sorry...”
But Gerard’s not placated. Not this time. It’s time to get this out in the open. Frank has been on tenter hooks for days and it’s just starting to tip over the edge from endearingly whacky to annoyingly fucked up.
Gee takes a moment to get over his hair yank anger spike.
“Frank...Frankie,” Gerard whispers, melting against his husband and letting him rub the sore spot on top of his head where his hair had been pulled. “What’s the matter? You’re not...are you having second thoughts?”
“No. No,” says Frank, quickly and decisively. But he looks a little sheepish.
“Well, what is it? We can cancel...anytime, you know that, right? Anytime at all.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t. I want this baby. It’s just....” He looks up at Gerard, lip caught between his teeth .
He looks up and Gerard and Gerard nods, he strokes Frank’s cheek and kisses his forehead.
“Go on, Frankie.”
Frank takes a deep breath. “I don’t think we should...do that...until after.” He pushes Gerard out of his lap, tucks himself away and pulls Gerard back into his lap, burying his face in Gerard’s neck.
Wow, thinks Gerard, more than a little stunned. He really hadn’t seen that one coming.
“Okay,” he says slowly, stroking Frank’s cheek. Frank likes to be stroked. He likes to be touched and held and fondled. Gerard loves the way Frank preens when he touches him like that. He likes the way it calms him down. “Do you mind if I ask why?”
Frank nods.
“You do mind?”
Frank nods again.
“Baby, you can tell me. I don’t...It’s me, your Gee,” he squeaks. Gerard, who had once seen his husband fall off a stage in front of a band he was trying to schmooze because he was so busy checking out Gerard’s ass he had missed a step, could not for the life of him figure out what Frank had left to be embarrassed about around him.
“Ithd mithts bee tha bthst one.”
“What?”
Frank pulls back and looks up at the ceiling. His cheeks are bright red. “I might be...you know...blowing the best ones in your...You know. In your mouth.”
“You think...hang on, what?”
The stern look Frank gives Gerard speaks volumes.
“You’re worried you might be wasting the best of your semen before the appointment at the clinic?”
Frank squeezes his eyes shut and nods.
From the moment they started talking about having a baby - when they looked around at their life and realised that, if they wanted it - a family - they could have it, it was always going to be Frank’s baby.
Gerard wasn’t now sure why he was so certain it should be, why they both had been. But he was, he absolutely was, even though Frank wasn’t exactly the most obvious candidate for fatherhood out of the two of them.
Gerard squirmed in Frank’s lap. He was still a little turned on from sucking Frank off before. He tamped it down and paid closer attention to Frank whose thoughts were clearly as far from Sexy Times as Frank’s thoughts ever got (which Gerard knew was normally never that far - but he could see today was a special occasion).
“I don’t want...you to feel let down,” Frank said, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I want the baby to be...I don’t want you to be let down. I’m going to be part of the baby, so I’m tied to her, no matter what. But you have to fall in love with her, with him or her. She has to be perfect so you fall in love with her too.”
Gerard blinked. My man, he thought, and his heart leapt and his skin sang. My man.
“Angel,” he sighed, and leant his forehead against Frank’s. “Frankie. That’s not...you can’t make...I mean...your, you know, your...” Gerard gestured to Frank’s groin area. This wasn’t really working. He took a deep breath. “Your stuff...is always, you know...good...”
He held Frank’s face and his hands, stroked his cheeks with his thumbs. “Our baby is going to be fucking perfect,” he said. “I don’t care what gender it is, what colour it is, what size, shape, orientation it is. It’s going to be half you, so I’m going to love it. Okay? I can’t not. I can’t not love your baby.”
Frank smiled the tiniest smile and nodded. Gerard leant down and kissed his husband.
“You guys, seriously need to get a room...” Gerard looked up from his perch on Frank’s lap to see Ray standing in the door way holding what looked like a broken guitar and glancing round the office. “I mean another room, with locks on it. In another building. Where I am not.”
“Oh, Ray,” sighed Frank, squeezing Gerard closer and pretending to hump him. “Don’t be jealous that my Way is the right Way...” He leered across the desk at Ray who looked appalled and shook his head.
“Jesus, Frank,” Gerard giggled and prised himself out of his husband’s lecherous grasp to go help Ray with whatever technical problem his latest project was having now.
This wasn’t over, not by a long shot. But at least Gerard had a clue what was going on in Frank’s head now. And hopefully knowing that would make the next two days before the appointment go a lot more smoothly.
*
Gerard and Frank went together to the clinic, a big, ironically sterile looking building on the edge of town. They wound up there an hour early due to Frank’s hyper anxiety that they not be late and therefore forfeit the chance to make a baby. Which Gerard assumed was Frank’s main concern. However it turned out that Frank’s main concern was that Mona would be there too, and he would be able to ‘perform’ knowing she was. Honestly.
But once they’d cleared up that Mona’s first appointment at the clinic was two hours after theirs Frank had calmed down somewhat.
The next hurdle was getting him to go into the little room with the little sample jar on his own.
“But why can’t you come with me? I want you to come with me. Come in the room, Gerard. For the love of God.”
Gerard smiled sweetly at the rather stern looking nurse behind the counter who’d just handed Frank the small plastic vial and shown him the door to his room.
“I just...can’t,” he hissed at Frank. Gerard was not going in the room with Frank. It wasn’t...well, it didn’t seem like the done thing.
There were couples sitting around the edge of the waiting room, all desperately trying not to make eye contact with each other. Gerard glanced at them. White, middle class, straight couples. He and Frank stood out like two, flaming pink, sore thumbs having a little hissy fit game of pinochle in the middle of the room.
“But why?” whined Frank, his knuckles white on the plastic vial. “I might need your...you know...your ASS-isstance. You know?”
“No, Frank I do not ...you know,” he hissed. “Not when there are nurses and, and people and...whatnot right outside the door.”
Frank huffed. “You didn’t seem to mind the other day when it was Hambone in the room next door.”
“When the fuck was Hambone...Frank!”
“Oh, snap! I thought you knew!” Frank giggled.
“Get in the room Frank.” Gerard walked away from his husband, took a seat on the far side of the waiting room, grabbed a magazine from the pile next to him and opened it wide in front of his face.
He didn’t look up when he heard what sounded like someone stamping their foot and slamming a door - entirely inappropriately - a few seconds later.
Gerard took a deep breath. What would his life be like in 9 months time when he had two small, infantile creatures to look after? Sheesh.
Gerard didn’t have time to get his magazine wall up when the door flew open a few seconds later and Frank stood there with a magazine of his own in one hand and an empty box of tissues in the other. “Um, can I get some more of these and also...” He asked the nurse behind the counter before glancing at Gerard. “And, um, all this porn has boobs in it. You got anything in, say, cowboys? Or maybe naughty police officers?”
Gerard leapt out of his seat, bolted across the waiting room, bundled his husband into the small, warm room and slammed the door behind him.
“Frank Antony Iero,” grit Gerard.
“Hi,” he replied batting his lashes. “How you doing?”
Frank pressed himself up against Gerard’s chest and squirmed in that incredibly annoying, yet entirely effective way he had of turning Gerard on in three seconds flat.
“Frank...Jesus. We can’t...do anything in here!”
“Why not?!” Frank whined. “I’m actually supposed to be doing something in here. Hello, porn for Africa, you know?” He lifted one on the magazines up by its edge. “Look...vaginas!”
Gerard had to admit Frank had a point - not about the vaginas, but about this being a room for...doing stuff in. And it would be nice, he guessed if the baby was made with a little bit of love and not just Frank spanking it to T&A. Gerard looked at Frank. He looked exceptionally fine today, too. Good enough to eat...
“Holy shit!” Frank squeaked as Gerard grappled him and pushed him up against the door.
“You drive me fucking insane.”
“Um...ok?” whispered Frank. His eyes were huge and excited.
Gerard ground his hips against Frank’s. “You know you’re doing it too, don’t you? Don’t you? You little...little...”
Frank squeaked again just as Gerard’s mouth closed over his. Gerard pushed his tongue against Frank’s, lapped at his lips, flicked over his teeth - sucking, biting, tonguing him.
Frank moaned and Gerard could feel him getting hard against his thigh. “Oh, Frankie. That’s it, Angel. That’s it.” His hand snaked down to cup Frank’s ass and pull him closer. Gerard loved Frank’s ass. L. O.V.E.D. It. He squeezed it tightly.
“Get hard for me, Angel. C’mon.”
Frank whimpered and Gerard smoothed a calming hand up his spine to cup the back of his head.
“Gee, my Gee-gee,” Frank sighed, clutching his shirt and riding the rocking of Gerard’s hips. Gerard shivered.
“Yeah, Baby. I’m here. I’m here,” he whispered and he trailed his hand down to Frank’s fly and slipped it open.
*
“Why, in the name of all that’s holy would you think I need to hear that?” Mikey pushed his sunglasses further up his wrinkled nose.
“Because, Michael, it was fucking beautiful. His hand was like...”
Mikey yelped. “Dude, come the fuck on.”
Frank giggled. “Well, it was intense and beautiful and...”
“My fucking brother, for the love of God!” Mikey drained the take out cup he was drinking from, popped the lid and peered inside. “It’s bad enough I have to see you dry humping each other at work all day long, without hearing the gruesome details of your baby making antics too.”
Frank sighed. “Well, it was perfect, and when our child, Michael, looks at us and asks us where she came from, Gee and I can honestly say we made her.”
“For the love of Odin...” muttered Mikey, scooping a splodge of foamy milk from the lid of the cup and sticking it in his mouth. He popped the lid back on the cup and slam dunked it in the bin next to their picnic table. “So, Mona the Magnificent is knocked up then?”
“We don’t know yet. She, like,” Frank made a pinched face. “Do - do you want to hear? It’s gross.”
Mikey, pulled his sunglasses down and peered at Frank. “My brother gives you the hand job of your life with a room full of people listening outside, some of whom clap when you leave the cubicle, and you want to tell me in minutiae what that was like...but a medical procedure involving the creation of new, wholesome, innocent life, and you’re all... squeamish.” Mikey shook his head. “Tell me, don’t tell me. I don’t care. As long as you call the kid Mikey when it’s born, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”
Frank hollered before guffawing into his sleeve with delight. “Baby making is AWESOME!”
Mikey smiled too. “Seriously though dude. Tell me. It is fucking awesome. I-I’m gonna be an uncle. Sort of, anyway.”
Frank sat up. “Dude, you’re like, one hundred per cent uncle. You’re Uncle Mikey fuckin’ Way. What the fuck?”
“I mean...” Mikey stopped and looked at Frank hard. “I don’t know what I mean, actually. But uncles are, like, really important. They, you know, they take you to get ice cream when you’re little and let you go on the big kids swings even though you’re not allowed. And you trust them...so much. Like...you believe in them and shit. And they keep an eye on you, but you don’t mind, because they’re cooler than your folks and don’t freak out when you say dumb shit about wanting a dragon tattoo on your chest. And...and you run away to their house when you’re a disenchanted teen, and they don’t judge you. They just give you your first beer and make sure you don’t puke and...and...Holy shit!” Mikey yanked off his sunglasses and stared at Frank. Frank nodded at him slowly. “I’m gonna be a fucking uncle. Oh my God!”
“Welcome to my world,” said Frank. “Only, in my world it’s ‘I’m gonna be a fucking Dad, call the cops!’”
“But, she’s not in the family way yet, right?” Mikey winked.
“In the family...where the fuck do you come up with this stuff?” Frank chortled.
“It’s a pun, Frank. All the best uncles are good at them, FYI.”
Frank giggled because it was so fucking true. “Well, she might be,” he said. “We’re waiting for the call. They do the thing, with my...you know. They wash it and shit, and then...”
“Wait, wait, wait...they wash your...your ...um?” Mikey fidgeted in his seat and winced.
“Semen, Mikey. See-men. We can make it, we can say it,” said Frank rolling his eyes.
Mikey sat up straight. “Fuck. Off,” he said. “Your semen. They wash it?”
“Yeah, I don’t know either,” said Frank as nonplussed as Mikey looked. “Gerard said he understands, so I leave that shit to him.”
“They don’t just like, stick it in a turkey baster and...” Mikey made an almost obscene squeezing gesture with his hand.
“Apparently not.”
“Well, learn something new every day,” said Mikey leaning back against the picnic table and sprawling a little. A butter fly flitted past and both of them were silent for a while watching it do it’s freaky, swoopy thing.
“Anyway,” sighed Frank after a while. “They do that and make the zygote thingies - isn’t that a fucking cool word? Like they should be a band. The Zygotes - and they make them in a ...in a jar and then plant them in her and see which ones take. They give it five weeks before confirming,” chirruped Frank for all the world as if he was the one who invented the whole process himself, and not just some guy on the happy end of a hand job.
“How many Zygotes do they put in?” Mikey asked as he examined his nails.
Frank squinted, trying to remember. “They said, because Mona is young or something, they make four... and yeah, four I guess.”
Mikey’s head rose slowly and he pinned Frank with a horrified stare. “Holy fuck, so you could end up with four fucking babies?”
“No, dude. Jesus. Calm down,” said Frank , incredulous. “Some of the little guys won’t make it, you know...won’t multiply and shit.”
“Dude. You could end up with four babies,” said Mikey, nodding slowly. Eye’s going from horrified to shades of shadenfreude in seconds.
“No, no, we couldn’t,” Frank complained. “Because Gerard said. He said...”
Frank’s eyes went hazy as he tried to think back.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a stick!”
The sound of Mikey laughing maniacally as Frank scrabbled for his phone and frantically dialled Gerard was pretty dang annoying.
*
“Ok, so we’ll go over this one, more , time...” Gerard took a deep breath and smoothed Frank’s hair down where he lay cradled against his chest. “They make four embryos. But they only put in one at a time...”
“And keep the others for if the first one doesn’t take,” mumbled Frank into Gerard tee shirt.
“That’s right,” said Gee in the most soothing, sensible voice he could muster.
He felt Frank grin.
“So we’re not going to have four babies?” Frank muttered.
“We are not going to have four babies,” agreed Gerard.
Frank breathed what sounded like a sigh of purest, purest relief.
Gerard thought about it for a second. Hmmm. “But I guess we could have twins,” he said.
“The fuck?”
“Well, I was reading, in one of the journal’s Dr Sims gave us... there’s an unexplained increase in the number of monozygotic twins IVF patients have.”
“Monozy-whatic?”
“Identical twins. Did you read anything I got from the clinic?”
Frank shrugged. Gerard sighed.
“Yeah, so it means that IVF babies turn into twins all the time! “ Gerard smiled. Twins could be fun, he thought.
Frank’s scream of horror could be heard all the way to Trenton.
*
Two weeks later Gerard is sitting at his desk at the label going through the accounts when he gets a text from Frank asking him to come to his office.
Gerard rolls his eyes and hits the intercom button. “Why?”
“Just come in here and stop being a pissy...just come in here, Gerard. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
Gerard gives in and goes through to Frank’s office. When he walks in Frank’s monitor is turned towards the door and Mona is beaming out at him from a skype window.
“Oh my God,” he says before she speaks. Because he knows. He knows as soon as he sees her lovely face.
“Ciao , Papa,” she says back and her grin - her grin is almost as huge as Frank’s.
*
The time doesn’t go nearly as slowly as Gerard expects it to. He’s usually a pretty patient guy, but he fully expects 9 months to feel like nine years.
But after Mona tells them (“Yes, Frank, I am in the family way...ha ha”) they start on the baby’s room, and then there’s SXSW and Warped and Gerard goes with one of their bands to a showcase in Japan, and Frank signs a band from Trenton that blow up over night and they have to deal with teenage girls camping out outside the label offices 24/7, and then suddenly Mona is standing on the porch with her knap sack and a tired, beautiful smile saying she can’t believe there’s only three weeks to go.
That had been last week. This week? It felt like it would never end. Gerard pitied Mona her swollen ankles, uncontrolled hormones and aching back. They did what they could - Frank dealt with foot rubs, Gerard dealt with tears. And it worked out pretty well. She said she quite liked being pregnant, but was ready for it to be over.
“Is it weird that I wish it was me? That I wish I was...That’s weird, right?”
They’re sitting in the swing seat watching Mona playing fetch with Professor Buckley in the front yard. She’s so big she can’t quite bend to get the stick so Buckley, bless him, drops the stick at her feet and then snatches it up again and drops it in her out stretched hand.
Frank presses himself closer to Gerard and looks up at him. “What do you mean?
“I dunno,” Gerard says. “She looks so lovely. So...I wish...I don’t know. Ignore me. I must be soaking up pregnant lady hormones or some shit.”
Frank goes quiet. Gerard hasn’t once tried to imagine what it would be like if, say...Mona was his wife, and this was going to be their baby. Them together. Mona is beautiful - Gerard’s a fag, not blind - but he just doesn’t feel any connection to her in that way. She’s...necessary...needful. He wants her there, around them, all the time. But...and this always makes him feel pretty bad...he won’t always feel like that. He knows he only feels like because of who’s inside her. He knows that as far as he’s concerned, she’s kind of an...an extension of him and Frank.
Frank slips his hand across Gerard’s stomach, squeezes the little paunch he’s got there. Gerard feels a blush creep up his cheeks. Frank’s always behaved as if he loved his curves - never let him feel shy about his body, or any of the things his body needed.
He nuzzles Gerard ear and Gerard feels the contact tingles race over his skin. “You’d look funny with that big belly on your seven foot long legs,” whispers Frank.
It’s true, Gee’s legs are ridiculously long and gangly for a relatively short guy. And he’d look hilarious with a baby belly.
“Shut up,” Gerard giggles, swatting at Frank’s arm. “I’d look...” Gerard follows the line of Frank’s gaze out to where Mona is leaning back, the late evening sun gilding her face and bare arms as she stretches.
“Nah...”chuckles Frank. “You wouldn’t look like that.”
Gerard shrugs and frowns, tucking his chin against his chest. “Yeah, probably not.”
Frank squeezes Gerard close. “You’d be fucking beautiful,” he says and presses his nose against Gee’s throat. “So fucking beautiful.”
“Frankie...”
“You would,” whispers Frank. “You’d be soft, and round and you’d move in that so-slow, languid way you have sometimes when you’re tired.” Frank leans up and presses his lips to Gerard’s. He strokes his hand over his belly. Ok, yeah, thinks Gerard, maybe they’re both high on pregnant lady hormones. What the fuck.
Frank giggles and leans back.
Gerard bites his lip, trying not to laugh. “Well, at least we’re fucking weirdoes together , Angel,” he says, and Frank lets him tuck a stray curl of his hair behind his ear and stroke his cheek.
“Frikken A, Gee-gee.”
*
“Franco...Franco...FRANCO!”
Gerard wakes first, it’s pitch black in their room and his blood has turned to ice. There’s someone in here. Someone next to their bed.
“Franco...Per favore, Franco... Svegli… il Gesù Cristo - avete detto che lo avreste svegliato…”
It takes Gerard another couple of seconds to figure out that that’s not English and a couple more seconds to wake up completely.
“Siete momento, Franco,” Mono whispers. “Sta scopando la venuta. Andare all'ospedale. Svegli, per favore.
Just as Gerard realises what’s going on, Frank sit’s bolt upright in bed. “Mona?!”
“Si, Franco. Siete momento...It’s time, piccolini. It’s time.
Gerard doesn’t have a second to say anything before Frank is punching him in the arm, yelling his name and leaping out of the bed all at the same time.
Gerard tries to leap up too, but he can’t seem to move. Finally he’s up, but he stands on something sharp, trips over a shoe and ends up sprawled over the floor at the end of the bed, which is the exact second that Frank flicks on the light.
Gerard blinks up at him and Mona, frozen by the bedroom door looking down at him.
“Baby?” Frank says.
“I’m good. I’m okay,” squeaks Gerard hauling himself up. Ouch, mother fucker.
He shoves his feet into the boots by the closet and stuffs his arms into a coat. He looks over to see Frank - Mona’s hand clutched to his chest as he takes short, fast shallow breaths with her - already in his coat and a pair of vans.
Car keys, lights off, out the door.
They head to the hospital, Gerard driving, Frank in the back seat with Mona, counting the breaths with her, letting her squeeze his hand, his knee, letting her curse him out in Italian every time a contraction hits.
“I take it back. I hate this plan!” she screams as they pull up to a set of lights on the deserted, midnight streets.
“Gee!” Frank hollers behind him. “Fuck the fucking lights! Floor it. The baby is fucking coming.”
The scream Mona lets lose then is like a jumper cable to Gerard’s heart. He shoves the car into drive and screeches through the lights. They’re so fucking far away. Why are they so far away? Like every street they turn down is still ten streets away from the Hospital. Gerard doesn’t remember it being this far way. It’s like a nightmare, Mona screaming, Frank yelling, the sickening lurch of the car. Gerard looks down and he can’t figure out how to get the fucking car in gear, and the streets, the streets wind on and on for miles...and Mona is screaming his name....
“Gerard...”
He can’t...where’s the...
“Gerard...”
Wha...”Mona?” Gerard sits bolt upright in bed. Mona is sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. The moonlight streams in the window giving the rooms weird silvery light. She smiles.
“It’s time, Gerard. Frank is calling the hospital. I’ve put my bag in the car. When you’re dressed we can go.”
“Mona?”
“Plenty of time yet, I think. I had a contraction first...two, three hours ago and called the midwife. I was in the bathroom and waters broke. So...it’s time.
“Oh my God!” Gerard struggles out of the bed clothes, but Mona grabs his arms.
“It’s okay...it’s okay...no rush, hours to go yet. Just...get dressed. Frank has made coffee.”
“Why didn’t you...I dreamt we were going to the hospital and we couldn’t...I couldn’t find it...”
Mona laughed. “It’s four blocks away.”
Gerard wiped his face. “I know. I know...” He looks up at Mona and cringes. “God...okay, okay. Getting dressed.”
Mona levers herself up off the bed.
“God, should you...Can I?”
“No, no, no...it’s alright. I can take a deep breath for the first time in months. I can do this. Frank can help me on the stairs.”
Gerard runs to the bedroom door and calls for Frank.
He hears his husband pounding up the stairs. “Hey, we ready to go? You’re not dressed.” Frank stands in the hall, face washed, teeth brushed, dressed and ready, with his hands on his hips. He looks Gerard up and down.
“How are you so fucking calm?” Hisses Gerard dragging his fingers through his crazy bed hair. “How?”
Frank blinks at him. He holds up his hand which is shaking like three day drunk on a detox.
“Dude,” he says and glances at Mona just out of ear shot, rubbing her stomach and panting as she leans against the wall by the stairs. “I’m not the one who has to squeeze a beach ball out my privates in a couple of hours. It’s called ‘keeping your shit together’. Give it a shot? Get dressed? “ He rubs Gerard’s arm. “I fucking need you,” he says and squeezes Gerard’s elbow before going to help Mona down the stairs.
They pile into the car and Gerard has a moment of disconnect when Frank slides into the back seat with Mona, and Gerard sees him clutching her hand in the rear view mirror.
But this isn’t a dream and the hospital is only four blocks away, and before Gerard even has time to process that, they are pulling up in front of it and Frank is racing inside to get a nurse and a wheel chair.
Once they’ve gone through the sliding doors, Gerard goes off to find a park. His heart has slowed down somewhat, but echoes of his nightmare are still banging around in his head and he feels disconnected, chilled. He thinks about the way Mona was clinging to Frank and he feels obsolete, a third wheel. He walks back to the hospital doors slowly and by the time he’s in the lobby his husband and the mother of his child are nowhere to be found.
He asks for them at reception and is unsurprised when the nurse looks him up and down and raises her eyebrows. “Only family are allowed into the birthing area, Mr...?”
“Way, and I am family. I’m the - one of the fathers...um .”
“Mr Iero is already in with Miss Trevi,” she says , frowning.
Gerard laughs nervously. “It’s Mr Way-Iero, with a- a hyphen, yeah...and I’m Mr Way, his husband and Mona Trevi is having our baby.” He looks at her pointedly. “So...”
“Oh!” The nurse turns scarlet and shuffles through some papers. “Oh, Mr Way...I’m...ah...”
“What the hell are you doing out here?!” Frank comes barrelling round the corner and grabs hold of Gerard’s arm. The contact is like Frank’s flicked Gerard’s switch. All he can see is Frank’s wide eyed terrified face. “Mona is asking for you.”
“She is?” Gerard asks, butterflies surge up in his tummy. He forgets the flustered nurse almost immediately and follows Frank through the doors into the birthing ward.
If he’d thought about it before he would have imagined a birthing ward to be near pandemonium, with nurses running about boiling water and fetching blankets. He figures that has more to do with all the old movies he used to watch with his Grandma than reality, because the reality is a quiet, beige corridor and a smiling nurse gesturing to them to follow her.
“Mona’s ready, Mr Iero. She’s started pushing.”
“Can we...should we go in?” Gerard is frozen at the door way. “Should I?”
“Yes!” Frank is pushing him in the back through the doors and Mona is there, on her side, a sheet over her legs, a blue and white hospital gown on.
“Bene, bene...come and hold my hand. I think I broke Frank’s,” she says when she sees him. She reaches for him and Gerard reaches for her and they connect. Finally.
Gerard smooths the hair back off her face as Frank puts more ice chips in her cup and hands it to her.
“Not long now Mona,” the midwife says, peering under the sheet.
Mona winces and tries to get up on her knees. Frank leans over and helps her, letting her pull on his arm and taking her weight. “I don’t think I can stand,” she says, “let me lean.”
“Okay then, sweetheart. Here we go...” Frank takes all her weight and Mona starts to push.
Gerard has never felt this much fear, elation and horror at one time before. It goes on for hours, so long that he’s complete exhausted, and yet every time he thinks’ it’s over there’s another wave, another contraction, another round of trying to sooth and encourage and share in it, somehow.
And Frank. Frank he sees almost in a whole new light. It’s not that he didn’t know Frank had inner reserves of tenacity, energy and control - no one who drags a business with the whole world against it, up by its boot straps and makes it work could have anything less - but Gerard is stunned by Frank. His husband has a cut off point, usually, but tonight it is as if Frank could do this for days if he needs to.
As he watches Frank cover up a wince when Mona’s grip on his arm slips and her nails rake the soft underside of his forearm, Gerard has never been prouder to call him his.
“You’re doing so great, Mona. Okay, not much longer...not much longer,” he says and his eyes flick to Gerard. “You should sit down, Gee, before you fall down.”
“No...no...I’m...” Gerard can’t take his eyes off Frank. He reaches for him and curls his hand in the back of his sweat damp tee-shirt. “I’m good,” he stammers. “I’m good.”
Mona hasn’t spoken any English for the last hour and a half. But it’s okay, apparently Frank has learnt to read minds, or speak Italian - whatever, he knows exactly what Mona needs and he there for her the second she decides she wants to get on her knees.
The mid wife reaches between her legs, and she’s smiling when she looks up at Gerard as tells him the baby’s head is out. “Would you like to see?”
“Can I?”
“Can you see her, Gee? Can you see her?” says Frank, and for the first time some of his calm slips and Gerard can hear the hysteria in his voice.
Gerard looks, and he sees his child, the top of her face, then her nose.
“I can see her face! You’re doing so great, Mona. Just a little more...just a little more...She’s coming ...she coming...”
*
Grace Lee Iero-Way is born at 5:56am on Tuesday, October 22 at the Beth Israel Medical centre in Newark NJ.
Her mother holds her and lets her latch on naturally, finding her own way up from her belly to her breast, while both her dads sob on each other’s shoulders and tell her how incredible she is, how perfect, how wanted.
Of all the days he has been happy, including the day Frank told him he loved him, and the day Frank asked him to marry him and Gerard said yes, and the day he said “I do” and meant the rest of his life, this is the greatest day of Gerard’s life.
Mona is asleep in the ward bed and Frank is sitting in the world’s most uncomfortable looking chair with their daughter lying asleep on his chest when Gerard comes back from the cafeteria. He stands in the door way and watches Frank stroking her soft pink skin, listens to him murmuring her name. And he thinks, this is it, this is the happiest I have ever been.
Frank looks up at him, his soft, tired eyes shining and Gerard thinks, yeah, his too.
“Mona says we should take her home tonight,” says Frank.
“We should, then,” says Gerard sitting in the chair next to Frank and putting his coffee on the bedside cabinet.
“I guess...but...” Gerard sees they way Frank looks at Mona.
“Frankie, it’s okay. Mona and I talked about this. A lot. She wanted us to take the baby away as soon as possible, and she never intended to come back to the house after.”
“We can’t just leave her here...”
“We’re not,” says Gerard and he’s glad they had this all planned out. “We’ll go home and then tomorrow, I’ll come and pick Mona up, if she’s ready, and take to the Regent. She flies out to Italy next week. We’ll see her again before then though.”
“Oh,” Frank says, and Gerard feels it too. Mona. She’s given them so much. How can she be leaving so soon already.
“It’s not like...she said...she said she would love to hear from us, from time to time, but...” Gerard strokes the downy soft hairs on Grace’s head. “She’s a smart girl, Frankie. She’s doing what’s best for her and us...and Grace.”
Frank is very close. They lean together and Gerard presses his mouth to Frank’s, firm and sure and full of how much he loves him. “I love you, baby daddy,” he whispers and leans down to press his nose against his daughter’s head.
Author: roxy_palace
Fandom: Bandom
Pairing: Frank/Gerard
Rating: R - for swears and red hot man love.
Warning: Nada, Enchilada
Disclaimer: No offence intended nor ownership implied
Challenge: Schmoop Bingo!
Prompt: Pregnancy
Word count: 8104
AN: This fic is a standalone, but part of an AU where Frank and Gee run Skeleton Crew together, MCR never existed and they’re just awesome dudes from NJ. All the fic from the Schmoop Bingo card I drew will be in this ‘verse. Other fic in this ‘verse are linked from here. Mini beta by the endlessly inspiring anna_unfolding , without whom I would be hopelessly lost. grosse bises, beautiful girl.
Summary:
******
They recognise her as soon as they see her, sitting in a booth at the back of the diner, because the agency wasn’t kidding around - the girl looks like she could be Gerard’s sister.
“Holy shit, baby,” says Frank clutching Gerard’s arm. “Was your dad in the Navy or something?”
“Shut up, Frank,” Gerard hisses as they came up to the table. But Frank’s got a point. The resemblance is uncanny.
“Hi, Mona? Um...Hi?” Gerard stumbles over the words as she looks up at him. He’s both relieved and disappointed to see her eyes are dark brown and nothing like his at all.
But, she does have sooty lashes and pale, cartridge paper coloured skin - her cheeks have a rosy tint to them - and her hair is a dark chocolate colour. Her nose is narrow and sharp. Gerard blinks.
“Gerard? Frank?” The young woman says, standing a little. Her accent is impossible not to notice with the r’s rolling off her tongue like their names are a foreign language. Gerard grins. He glances at Frank who is making doe eyes like someone just clocked him on the head. Gerard figures his hubby’s ensorcelled too.
“Yes! Hi! I’m Gerard and this is my husband, Frank.”
“Frank!” Squeaks Frank, sticking out his hand. “Frank and Gerard. That’s us. Me and him. And me! Um...Hi!”
Gerard just manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes and flicking Frank in the ear. He’s pretty sure that would be exactly the wrong impression to make.
Mona frowns, but she’s still smiling and Gerard thinks it’s a miracle she doesn’t just pack up her stuff - she has a book, crack spined , on the table next to her coffee - and high tail it out of there. “So glad to meet you, Frank... Gerard. I have heard so much about you.”
“Oh no...” says Frank his smile fading.
“All good, Mr Iero! All good!” She clasps Frank’s hand and Gerard watches, bemused, as the blush spreads across Frank’s nose.
Frank slips into the booth opposite Mona, Gerard sits next to him. And Gerard is so relieved at Frank’s reaction to this girl. She’s the fifth woman they’ve met, but it’s the first time Frank has been...Frank and not a complete Jackass.
“Thank you, thank you for meeting us. I don’t...They told us it was just a preliminary thing, you know, to see how we get on and everything...I don’t really...” Gerard stumbles over his words.
“Yeah, we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing,” chimes Frank. “We were kind of hoping you would.”
She laughs out loud as Gerard just looks at his husband incredulously. “Frank,” he says, trying to imbue the word with as much ‘shut up, for the love of God’ as he can.
But Mona is nodding and smiling. “I have a clue,” she says. “First, I tell you about myself, why I’m on the programme, what I do with myself. Etcetera. Then you tell me why you are on the programme, what you do with yourselves. Yes?”
They nod in unison.
“And then you tell me why I should let you get me pregnant.”
The waitress, who has only just walked up to their table, squeaks and drops her note pad. “Um...I’ll give y’all another couple of minutes,” she says, clearly horrified at what she’s just over heard.
“Oh, um...just, God...” Gerard covers his face with his hand as Frank laughs out loud.
“Nah, we’re good. Just coffee please....Valerie,” says Frank, reading the poor waitress’s name badge. “Two cups, thanks!”
Mona laughs again. She has a good laugh; warm and encouraging. Gerard likes the sound, could stand hearing it for the rest of his life.
“Oops!” she says, covering her mouth with her hand.
*
They’re having a baby. Gerard Way and Frank Iero are going to be dads.
At least that’s the plan, or it was until they started meeting potential surrogates and Frank turned into...Dadzilla. If Gerard didn’t find it kind of funny, and pretty adorable, he’d be freaking out. But Frank wants this. He really, wants this.
And Gerard? Well, there’s never been anything Frank wanted that Gerard didn’t want to give him.
So they found an agency that put surrogates in touch with childless couples and signed up.
But a couple of weeks later, when they met the first candidate at a cafe near the agency, the first words out of Frank mouth were: “Do you or any of your family vote Republican, own a gun or think Sarah Palin is ‘neat’?”
Needless to say, it had been all downhill from there.
“That’s just the way I roll, baby. You know that,” Frank had said five meetings later. “I get a feel for someone straight away and if I don’t like them...” He’d made a cutting motion across his throat.
Gerard had rolled his eyes at him that time. Unrestrainedly.
“Gillian,” he’d asked. “What was wrong with Gillian? She had a Phd in bioengineering from MIT, for crying out loud.”
“Her eyes were too close together,” said frank, squinting. “My nonna always said that a woman like that will steal your silverware.”
“Gillian drove a lotus, Frank. I was planning on stealing her silverware.”
“Whatever.” Frank said unfazed.
“Ok then, Helen. She was...”
“Six foot three, Gerard. Do you want my own child to give me short man complex?” Frank said in a huff, with his hands on his hips and his lips pursed.
Good point, thought Gerard. He managed not to say that between the two of them , any child they had would probably come out just right. It wouldn’t help the situation any.
“Ruth?” Gerard forged on. He was on the verge of figuring out what the hell Frank’s problem was. He wasn’t going to let up.
“Too...Ruthless. You could tell. ”
If there was something going on Frank couldn’t or wouldn’t articulate it. Frank was just making excuses. Crazy assed excuses. “Fiona?” Gerard asked.
“She smelled of soup.”
“You are making this shit up.”
“Beef and onions. With cheese,” said Frank with a great deal of pity for poor Fiona’s soupy condition.
“Valerie?”
“Wanted to have actual sex. Like, she wanted me. Ew.”
Gerard had given up then. Valerie had not wanted to have actual sex with Frank. Valerie was a lesbian.
But Frank had his ways, and his ways were... usually a fucking mystery to Gerard. So, he’d let it go.
Someone would come along, or she wouldn’t. As long as they had each other, it didn’t matter.
Although, there was a twinge, sometimes, deep in his chest - just behind his heart - that said ‘How long? How long will we have to wait?’ And it always surprised Gerard.
He didn’t even realise how much he wanted to meet Frank’s future child, to be a dad himself and find out what that’s like.
He wanted so much to give that to Frank, an only child of divorced parents, who Gerard was pretty sure had no idea how loudly he telegraphed his desire to have a family of his own.
Gerard felt it to his core, in the way Frank loved his family - Mikey and their parents - in the way he claimed Mikey as a brother of his own.
So the waiting seemed hard. It seemed endless.
But then the agency had called and described Mona.
“Let’s meet her,” Frank had said, much to Gerard’s delight and surprise . “She sounds interesting.”
And the next thing they knew they were here, in a diner with Mona from Naples who maybe, might, perhaps let them get her pregnant.
The waitress brings coffee and Mona begins to talk about herself.
“I’m a student. I study at Columbia. Journalism. It is a good school, yes? The best, I think. Anyway, it’s also expensive, so...surrogate.” She shrugs as if carrying someone else’s child for nine months and then giving it away and never seeing it again is the most obvious solution to student debt ever.
They discuss the money, how it will help her. She says she’s going back to Italy to work for CNN Europe, she hopes, and one day would like to be an anchor woman.
“That’s great, really...but...” Gerard says, mentally feeling his way towards the question he wants to ask - feels he must ask if they’re going to do this. He’s aware that she’s dealing with them in her second language. He doesn’t want to screw it up.
“I think what Gee is trying to say is,” says Frank looking at him pointedly. “Are you going to be okay giving us your baby when the time comes.”
Gerard winces. He’d hoped Frank’s general lack of tact would be less pronounced in the presence of a surrogate he actually likes this time, someone who could potentially give them something so incredibly precious. But it seems that, no, Frank is Frank. Beautiful, fertile, Italian girls or no.
Mona sighs and nods and gives them an appraising look.
“I thought, when I first heard the idea, no one can do this,” she says, flipping a lock of her heavy hair over her shoulder. “It’s too hard. But, that’s because I was thinking of giving up my baby.”
She shakes her head and sips her coffee.
“This - if we do it - this is not my baby. This is you and you,” she says pointing at them. “I’m just...oven for your bun. Yes? Your bun. Not mine.” She smiles.
Gerard looks at Frank to see his eyes shining.
“Yeah,” Frank sighs and picks up Gerard’s hand. “Our bun.”
They drink their coffee and Mona asks them about their jobs, the label. She asks them how they met - Gerard gives her a much edited version which Frank giggles through like an infant high on cherry cola. She seems delighted with their description of the house on Maple Lane where they live - the high moulded ceilings, the wooden floors, the long, deep veranda with the swing seat.
“If you like, when it’s time,” Gerard says. “If you say yes, I mean - we have a room for you. Only if you want...” Gerard stumbles over it, trying not to say it’s what he wants, to be there, when the time comes...if it ever does.
“We’d like that, if you’d come and stay,” says Frank, bold as brass.
Mona smiles. “I’d like that too, I think.”
After an hour Mona says she has to get going to class. Frank immediately pays for her coffee and leans over the table to give her a hug. “It was so great meeting you. So great. Thank you so much.”
“Niente, Franco!” she says hugging him back. And Gerard can’t believe Frank actually giggles. If it wasn’t so cute, it’d be embarrassing.
They leave the booth and Mona touches his arm gently. “I’ll let the agency know what I decide, Gee,” She smiles. “But, I like you. Okay?”
“Okay,” he says back, and Gerard is a little overwhelmed at how excited it makes him feel.
As she leaves the diner, Gerard and Frank slip back into the booth.
“We’re having a bambino,” whispers Frank, sounding full of awe.
“I think you’re right,” says Gerard back.
*
Two weeks later they get a call from the agency saying Mona has agreed to be their surrogate and that’s the point when the fun really begins.
Gerard notices that Frank doesn’t exactly freak out, but his usual levels of twitchy excitement seem to shoot through the roof. It only gets worse as the day booked for him to go into the clinic and deliver his end of the baby making bargain inches closer.
Gerard does everything he can to keep him calm, and seriously, his jaw is starting to get RSI from all the impromptu blow jobs he’s been giving. Not to mention his knees are by now in open revolt. But he wants Frank to enjoy this time. That’s a thought that always makes me smirk. Frank’s enjoying it all right. But it’s not making much of a dent in his anxiety.
One afternoon, Gerard is concertina’ed under Frank’s desk at the label praying to God no one needs to see either of them for a while as he swallows Frank down again, when Frank grabs a handful of his hair and just yanks on it.
“What the ever loving Fuck!” Gerard yells the second he can struggle out from under the desk. “That fucking hurt!”
“Oh God, Gee. God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry baby,” says Frank reaching for Gerard and pulling him down into his lap. “I didn’t mean to...I’m sorry...”
But Gerard’s not placated. Not this time. It’s time to get this out in the open. Frank has been on tenter hooks for days and it’s just starting to tip over the edge from endearingly whacky to annoyingly fucked up.
Gee takes a moment to get over his hair yank anger spike.
“Frank...Frankie,” Gerard whispers, melting against his husband and letting him rub the sore spot on top of his head where his hair had been pulled. “What’s the matter? You’re not...are you having second thoughts?”
“No. No,” says Frank, quickly and decisively. But he looks a little sheepish.
“Well, what is it? We can cancel...anytime, you know that, right? Anytime at all.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t. I want this baby. It’s just....” He looks up at Gerard, lip caught between his teeth .
He looks up and Gerard and Gerard nods, he strokes Frank’s cheek and kisses his forehead.
“Go on, Frankie.”
Frank takes a deep breath. “I don’t think we should...do that...until after.” He pushes Gerard out of his lap, tucks himself away and pulls Gerard back into his lap, burying his face in Gerard’s neck.
Wow, thinks Gerard, more than a little stunned. He really hadn’t seen that one coming.
“Okay,” he says slowly, stroking Frank’s cheek. Frank likes to be stroked. He likes to be touched and held and fondled. Gerard loves the way Frank preens when he touches him like that. He likes the way it calms him down. “Do you mind if I ask why?”
Frank nods.
“You do mind?”
Frank nods again.
“Baby, you can tell me. I don’t...It’s me, your Gee,” he squeaks. Gerard, who had once seen his husband fall off a stage in front of a band he was trying to schmooze because he was so busy checking out Gerard’s ass he had missed a step, could not for the life of him figure out what Frank had left to be embarrassed about around him.
“Ithd mithts bee tha bthst one.”
“What?”
Frank pulls back and looks up at the ceiling. His cheeks are bright red. “I might be...you know...blowing the best ones in your...You know. In your mouth.”
“You think...hang on, what?”
The stern look Frank gives Gerard speaks volumes.
“You’re worried you might be wasting the best of your semen before the appointment at the clinic?”
Frank squeezes his eyes shut and nods.
From the moment they started talking about having a baby - when they looked around at their life and realised that, if they wanted it - a family - they could have it, it was always going to be Frank’s baby.
Gerard wasn’t now sure why he was so certain it should be, why they both had been. But he was, he absolutely was, even though Frank wasn’t exactly the most obvious candidate for fatherhood out of the two of them.
Gerard squirmed in Frank’s lap. He was still a little turned on from sucking Frank off before. He tamped it down and paid closer attention to Frank whose thoughts were clearly as far from Sexy Times as Frank’s thoughts ever got (which Gerard knew was normally never that far - but he could see today was a special occasion).
“I don’t want...you to feel let down,” Frank said, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I want the baby to be...I don’t want you to be let down. I’m going to be part of the baby, so I’m tied to her, no matter what. But you have to fall in love with her, with him or her. She has to be perfect so you fall in love with her too.”
Gerard blinked. My man, he thought, and his heart leapt and his skin sang. My man.
“Angel,” he sighed, and leant his forehead against Frank’s. “Frankie. That’s not...you can’t make...I mean...your, you know, your...” Gerard gestured to Frank’s groin area. This wasn’t really working. He took a deep breath. “Your stuff...is always, you know...good...”
He held Frank’s face and his hands, stroked his cheeks with his thumbs. “Our baby is going to be fucking perfect,” he said. “I don’t care what gender it is, what colour it is, what size, shape, orientation it is. It’s going to be half you, so I’m going to love it. Okay? I can’t not. I can’t not love your baby.”
Frank smiled the tiniest smile and nodded. Gerard leant down and kissed his husband.
“You guys, seriously need to get a room...” Gerard looked up from his perch on Frank’s lap to see Ray standing in the door way holding what looked like a broken guitar and glancing round the office. “I mean another room, with locks on it. In another building. Where I am not.”
“Oh, Ray,” sighed Frank, squeezing Gerard closer and pretending to hump him. “Don’t be jealous that my Way is the right Way...” He leered across the desk at Ray who looked appalled and shook his head.
“Jesus, Frank,” Gerard giggled and prised himself out of his husband’s lecherous grasp to go help Ray with whatever technical problem his latest project was having now.
This wasn’t over, not by a long shot. But at least Gerard had a clue what was going on in Frank’s head now. And hopefully knowing that would make the next two days before the appointment go a lot more smoothly.
*
Gerard and Frank went together to the clinic, a big, ironically sterile looking building on the edge of town. They wound up there an hour early due to Frank’s hyper anxiety that they not be late and therefore forfeit the chance to make a baby. Which Gerard assumed was Frank’s main concern. However it turned out that Frank’s main concern was that Mona would be there too, and he would be able to ‘perform’ knowing she was. Honestly.
But once they’d cleared up that Mona’s first appointment at the clinic was two hours after theirs Frank had calmed down somewhat.
The next hurdle was getting him to go into the little room with the little sample jar on his own.
“But why can’t you come with me? I want you to come with me. Come in the room, Gerard. For the love of God.”
Gerard smiled sweetly at the rather stern looking nurse behind the counter who’d just handed Frank the small plastic vial and shown him the door to his room.
“I just...can’t,” he hissed at Frank. Gerard was not going in the room with Frank. It wasn’t...well, it didn’t seem like the done thing.
There were couples sitting around the edge of the waiting room, all desperately trying not to make eye contact with each other. Gerard glanced at them. White, middle class, straight couples. He and Frank stood out like two, flaming pink, sore thumbs having a little hissy fit game of pinochle in the middle of the room.
“But why?” whined Frank, his knuckles white on the plastic vial. “I might need your...you know...your ASS-isstance. You know?”
“No, Frank I do not ...you know,” he hissed. “Not when there are nurses and, and people and...whatnot right outside the door.”
Frank huffed. “You didn’t seem to mind the other day when it was Hambone in the room next door.”
“When the fuck was Hambone...Frank!”
“Oh, snap! I thought you knew!” Frank giggled.
“Get in the room Frank.” Gerard walked away from his husband, took a seat on the far side of the waiting room, grabbed a magazine from the pile next to him and opened it wide in front of his face.
He didn’t look up when he heard what sounded like someone stamping their foot and slamming a door - entirely inappropriately - a few seconds later.
Gerard took a deep breath. What would his life be like in 9 months time when he had two small, infantile creatures to look after? Sheesh.
Gerard didn’t have time to get his magazine wall up when the door flew open a few seconds later and Frank stood there with a magazine of his own in one hand and an empty box of tissues in the other. “Um, can I get some more of these and also...” He asked the nurse behind the counter before glancing at Gerard. “And, um, all this porn has boobs in it. You got anything in, say, cowboys? Or maybe naughty police officers?”
Gerard leapt out of his seat, bolted across the waiting room, bundled his husband into the small, warm room and slammed the door behind him.
“Frank Antony Iero,” grit Gerard.
“Hi,” he replied batting his lashes. “How you doing?”
Frank pressed himself up against Gerard’s chest and squirmed in that incredibly annoying, yet entirely effective way he had of turning Gerard on in three seconds flat.
“Frank...Jesus. We can’t...do anything in here!”
“Why not?!” Frank whined. “I’m actually supposed to be doing something in here. Hello, porn for Africa, you know?” He lifted one on the magazines up by its edge. “Look...vaginas!”
Gerard had to admit Frank had a point - not about the vaginas, but about this being a room for...doing stuff in. And it would be nice, he guessed if the baby was made with a little bit of love and not just Frank spanking it to T&A. Gerard looked at Frank. He looked exceptionally fine today, too. Good enough to eat...
“Holy shit!” Frank squeaked as Gerard grappled him and pushed him up against the door.
“You drive me fucking insane.”
“Um...ok?” whispered Frank. His eyes were huge and excited.
Gerard ground his hips against Frank’s. “You know you’re doing it too, don’t you? Don’t you? You little...little...”
Frank squeaked again just as Gerard’s mouth closed over his. Gerard pushed his tongue against Frank’s, lapped at his lips, flicked over his teeth - sucking, biting, tonguing him.
Frank moaned and Gerard could feel him getting hard against his thigh. “Oh, Frankie. That’s it, Angel. That’s it.” His hand snaked down to cup Frank’s ass and pull him closer. Gerard loved Frank’s ass. L. O.V.E.D. It. He squeezed it tightly.
“Get hard for me, Angel. C’mon.”
Frank whimpered and Gerard smoothed a calming hand up his spine to cup the back of his head.
“Gee, my Gee-gee,” Frank sighed, clutching his shirt and riding the rocking of Gerard’s hips. Gerard shivered.
“Yeah, Baby. I’m here. I’m here,” he whispered and he trailed his hand down to Frank’s fly and slipped it open.
*
“Why, in the name of all that’s holy would you think I need to hear that?” Mikey pushed his sunglasses further up his wrinkled nose.
“Because, Michael, it was fucking beautiful. His hand was like...”
Mikey yelped. “Dude, come the fuck on.”
Frank giggled. “Well, it was intense and beautiful and...”
“My fucking brother, for the love of God!” Mikey drained the take out cup he was drinking from, popped the lid and peered inside. “It’s bad enough I have to see you dry humping each other at work all day long, without hearing the gruesome details of your baby making antics too.”
Frank sighed. “Well, it was perfect, and when our child, Michael, looks at us and asks us where she came from, Gee and I can honestly say we made her.”
“For the love of Odin...” muttered Mikey, scooping a splodge of foamy milk from the lid of the cup and sticking it in his mouth. He popped the lid back on the cup and slam dunked it in the bin next to their picnic table. “So, Mona the Magnificent is knocked up then?”
“We don’t know yet. She, like,” Frank made a pinched face. “Do - do you want to hear? It’s gross.”
Mikey, pulled his sunglasses down and peered at Frank. “My brother gives you the hand job of your life with a room full of people listening outside, some of whom clap when you leave the cubicle, and you want to tell me in minutiae what that was like...but a medical procedure involving the creation of new, wholesome, innocent life, and you’re all... squeamish.” Mikey shook his head. “Tell me, don’t tell me. I don’t care. As long as you call the kid Mikey when it’s born, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”
Frank hollered before guffawing into his sleeve with delight. “Baby making is AWESOME!”
Mikey smiled too. “Seriously though dude. Tell me. It is fucking awesome. I-I’m gonna be an uncle. Sort of, anyway.”
Frank sat up. “Dude, you’re like, one hundred per cent uncle. You’re Uncle Mikey fuckin’ Way. What the fuck?”
“I mean...” Mikey stopped and looked at Frank hard. “I don’t know what I mean, actually. But uncles are, like, really important. They, you know, they take you to get ice cream when you’re little and let you go on the big kids swings even though you’re not allowed. And you trust them...so much. Like...you believe in them and shit. And they keep an eye on you, but you don’t mind, because they’re cooler than your folks and don’t freak out when you say dumb shit about wanting a dragon tattoo on your chest. And...and you run away to their house when you’re a disenchanted teen, and they don’t judge you. They just give you your first beer and make sure you don’t puke and...and...Holy shit!” Mikey yanked off his sunglasses and stared at Frank. Frank nodded at him slowly. “I’m gonna be a fucking uncle. Oh my God!”
“Welcome to my world,” said Frank. “Only, in my world it’s ‘I’m gonna be a fucking Dad, call the cops!’”
“But, she’s not in the family way yet, right?” Mikey winked.
“In the family...where the fuck do you come up with this stuff?” Frank chortled.
“It’s a pun, Frank. All the best uncles are good at them, FYI.”
Frank giggled because it was so fucking true. “Well, she might be,” he said. “We’re waiting for the call. They do the thing, with my...you know. They wash it and shit, and then...”
“Wait, wait, wait...they wash your...your ...um?” Mikey fidgeted in his seat and winced.
“Semen, Mikey. See-men. We can make it, we can say it,” said Frank rolling his eyes.
Mikey sat up straight. “Fuck. Off,” he said. “Your semen. They wash it?”
“Yeah, I don’t know either,” said Frank as nonplussed as Mikey looked. “Gerard said he understands, so I leave that shit to him.”
“They don’t just like, stick it in a turkey baster and...” Mikey made an almost obscene squeezing gesture with his hand.
“Apparently not.”
“Well, learn something new every day,” said Mikey leaning back against the picnic table and sprawling a little. A butter fly flitted past and both of them were silent for a while watching it do it’s freaky, swoopy thing.
“Anyway,” sighed Frank after a while. “They do that and make the zygote thingies - isn’t that a fucking cool word? Like they should be a band. The Zygotes - and they make them in a ...in a jar and then plant them in her and see which ones take. They give it five weeks before confirming,” chirruped Frank for all the world as if he was the one who invented the whole process himself, and not just some guy on the happy end of a hand job.
“How many Zygotes do they put in?” Mikey asked as he examined his nails.
Frank squinted, trying to remember. “They said, because Mona is young or something, they make four... and yeah, four I guess.”
Mikey’s head rose slowly and he pinned Frank with a horrified stare. “Holy fuck, so you could end up with four fucking babies?”
“No, dude. Jesus. Calm down,” said Frank , incredulous. “Some of the little guys won’t make it, you know...won’t multiply and shit.”
“Dude. You could end up with four babies,” said Mikey, nodding slowly. Eye’s going from horrified to shades of shadenfreude in seconds.
“No, no, we couldn’t,” Frank complained. “Because Gerard said. He said...”
Frank’s eyes went hazy as he tried to think back.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a stick!”
The sound of Mikey laughing maniacally as Frank scrabbled for his phone and frantically dialled Gerard was pretty dang annoying.
*
“Ok, so we’ll go over this one, more , time...” Gerard took a deep breath and smoothed Frank’s hair down where he lay cradled against his chest. “They make four embryos. But they only put in one at a time...”
“And keep the others for if the first one doesn’t take,” mumbled Frank into Gerard tee shirt.
“That’s right,” said Gee in the most soothing, sensible voice he could muster.
He felt Frank grin.
“So we’re not going to have four babies?” Frank muttered.
“We are not going to have four babies,” agreed Gerard.
Frank breathed what sounded like a sigh of purest, purest relief.
Gerard thought about it for a second. Hmmm. “But I guess we could have twins,” he said.
“The fuck?”
“Well, I was reading, in one of the journal’s Dr Sims gave us... there’s an unexplained increase in the number of monozygotic twins IVF patients have.”
“Monozy-whatic?”
“Identical twins. Did you read anything I got from the clinic?”
Frank shrugged. Gerard sighed.
“Yeah, so it means that IVF babies turn into twins all the time! “ Gerard smiled. Twins could be fun, he thought.
Frank’s scream of horror could be heard all the way to Trenton.
*
Two weeks later Gerard is sitting at his desk at the label going through the accounts when he gets a text from Frank asking him to come to his office.
Gerard rolls his eyes and hits the intercom button. “Why?”
“Just come in here and stop being a pissy...just come in here, Gerard. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
Gerard gives in and goes through to Frank’s office. When he walks in Frank’s monitor is turned towards the door and Mona is beaming out at him from a skype window.
“Oh my God,” he says before she speaks. Because he knows. He knows as soon as he sees her lovely face.
“Ciao , Papa,” she says back and her grin - her grin is almost as huge as Frank’s.
*
The time doesn’t go nearly as slowly as Gerard expects it to. He’s usually a pretty patient guy, but he fully expects 9 months to feel like nine years.
But after Mona tells them (“Yes, Frank, I am in the family way...ha ha”) they start on the baby’s room, and then there’s SXSW and Warped and Gerard goes with one of their bands to a showcase in Japan, and Frank signs a band from Trenton that blow up over night and they have to deal with teenage girls camping out outside the label offices 24/7, and then suddenly Mona is standing on the porch with her knap sack and a tired, beautiful smile saying she can’t believe there’s only three weeks to go.
That had been last week. This week? It felt like it would never end. Gerard pitied Mona her swollen ankles, uncontrolled hormones and aching back. They did what they could - Frank dealt with foot rubs, Gerard dealt with tears. And it worked out pretty well. She said she quite liked being pregnant, but was ready for it to be over.
“Is it weird that I wish it was me? That I wish I was...That’s weird, right?”
They’re sitting in the swing seat watching Mona playing fetch with Professor Buckley in the front yard. She’s so big she can’t quite bend to get the stick so Buckley, bless him, drops the stick at her feet and then snatches it up again and drops it in her out stretched hand.
Frank presses himself closer to Gerard and looks up at him. “What do you mean?
“I dunno,” Gerard says. “She looks so lovely. So...I wish...I don’t know. Ignore me. I must be soaking up pregnant lady hormones or some shit.”
Frank goes quiet. Gerard hasn’t once tried to imagine what it would be like if, say...Mona was his wife, and this was going to be their baby. Them together. Mona is beautiful - Gerard’s a fag, not blind - but he just doesn’t feel any connection to her in that way. She’s...necessary...needful. He wants her there, around them, all the time. But...and this always makes him feel pretty bad...he won’t always feel like that. He knows he only feels like because of who’s inside her. He knows that as far as he’s concerned, she’s kind of an...an extension of him and Frank.
Frank slips his hand across Gerard’s stomach, squeezes the little paunch he’s got there. Gerard feels a blush creep up his cheeks. Frank’s always behaved as if he loved his curves - never let him feel shy about his body, or any of the things his body needed.
He nuzzles Gerard ear and Gerard feels the contact tingles race over his skin. “You’d look funny with that big belly on your seven foot long legs,” whispers Frank.
It’s true, Gee’s legs are ridiculously long and gangly for a relatively short guy. And he’d look hilarious with a baby belly.
“Shut up,” Gerard giggles, swatting at Frank’s arm. “I’d look...” Gerard follows the line of Frank’s gaze out to where Mona is leaning back, the late evening sun gilding her face and bare arms as she stretches.
“Nah...”chuckles Frank. “You wouldn’t look like that.”
Gerard shrugs and frowns, tucking his chin against his chest. “Yeah, probably not.”
Frank squeezes Gerard close. “You’d be fucking beautiful,” he says and presses his nose against Gee’s throat. “So fucking beautiful.”
“Frankie...”
“You would,” whispers Frank. “You’d be soft, and round and you’d move in that so-slow, languid way you have sometimes when you’re tired.” Frank leans up and presses his lips to Gerard’s. He strokes his hand over his belly. Ok, yeah, thinks Gerard, maybe they’re both high on pregnant lady hormones. What the fuck.
Frank giggles and leans back.
Gerard bites his lip, trying not to laugh. “Well, at least we’re fucking weirdoes together , Angel,” he says, and Frank lets him tuck a stray curl of his hair behind his ear and stroke his cheek.
“Frikken A, Gee-gee.”
*
“Franco...Franco...FRANCO!”
Gerard wakes first, it’s pitch black in their room and his blood has turned to ice. There’s someone in here. Someone next to their bed.
“Franco...Per favore, Franco... Svegli… il Gesù Cristo - avete detto che lo avreste svegliato…”
It takes Gerard another couple of seconds to figure out that that’s not English and a couple more seconds to wake up completely.
“Siete momento, Franco,” Mono whispers. “Sta scopando la venuta. Andare all'ospedale. Svegli, per favore.
Just as Gerard realises what’s going on, Frank sit’s bolt upright in bed. “Mona?!”
“Si, Franco. Siete momento...It’s time, piccolini. It’s time.
Gerard doesn’t have a second to say anything before Frank is punching him in the arm, yelling his name and leaping out of the bed all at the same time.
Gerard tries to leap up too, but he can’t seem to move. Finally he’s up, but he stands on something sharp, trips over a shoe and ends up sprawled over the floor at the end of the bed, which is the exact second that Frank flicks on the light.
Gerard blinks up at him and Mona, frozen by the bedroom door looking down at him.
“Baby?” Frank says.
“I’m good. I’m okay,” squeaks Gerard hauling himself up. Ouch, mother fucker.
He shoves his feet into the boots by the closet and stuffs his arms into a coat. He looks over to see Frank - Mona’s hand clutched to his chest as he takes short, fast shallow breaths with her - already in his coat and a pair of vans.
Car keys, lights off, out the door.
They head to the hospital, Gerard driving, Frank in the back seat with Mona, counting the breaths with her, letting her squeeze his hand, his knee, letting her curse him out in Italian every time a contraction hits.
“I take it back. I hate this plan!” she screams as they pull up to a set of lights on the deserted, midnight streets.
“Gee!” Frank hollers behind him. “Fuck the fucking lights! Floor it. The baby is fucking coming.”
The scream Mona lets lose then is like a jumper cable to Gerard’s heart. He shoves the car into drive and screeches through the lights. They’re so fucking far away. Why are they so far away? Like every street they turn down is still ten streets away from the Hospital. Gerard doesn’t remember it being this far way. It’s like a nightmare, Mona screaming, Frank yelling, the sickening lurch of the car. Gerard looks down and he can’t figure out how to get the fucking car in gear, and the streets, the streets wind on and on for miles...and Mona is screaming his name....
“Gerard...”
He can’t...where’s the...
“Gerard...”
Wha...”Mona?” Gerard sits bolt upright in bed. Mona is sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. The moonlight streams in the window giving the rooms weird silvery light. She smiles.
“It’s time, Gerard. Frank is calling the hospital. I’ve put my bag in the car. When you’re dressed we can go.”
“Mona?”
“Plenty of time yet, I think. I had a contraction first...two, three hours ago and called the midwife. I was in the bathroom and waters broke. So...it’s time.
“Oh my God!” Gerard struggles out of the bed clothes, but Mona grabs his arms.
“It’s okay...it’s okay...no rush, hours to go yet. Just...get dressed. Frank has made coffee.”
“Why didn’t you...I dreamt we were going to the hospital and we couldn’t...I couldn’t find it...”
Mona laughed. “It’s four blocks away.”
Gerard wiped his face. “I know. I know...” He looks up at Mona and cringes. “God...okay, okay. Getting dressed.”
Mona levers herself up off the bed.
“God, should you...Can I?”
“No, no, no...it’s alright. I can take a deep breath for the first time in months. I can do this. Frank can help me on the stairs.”
Gerard runs to the bedroom door and calls for Frank.
He hears his husband pounding up the stairs. “Hey, we ready to go? You’re not dressed.” Frank stands in the hall, face washed, teeth brushed, dressed and ready, with his hands on his hips. He looks Gerard up and down.
“How are you so fucking calm?” Hisses Gerard dragging his fingers through his crazy bed hair. “How?”
Frank blinks at him. He holds up his hand which is shaking like three day drunk on a detox.
“Dude,” he says and glances at Mona just out of ear shot, rubbing her stomach and panting as she leans against the wall by the stairs. “I’m not the one who has to squeeze a beach ball out my privates in a couple of hours. It’s called ‘keeping your shit together’. Give it a shot? Get dressed? “ He rubs Gerard’s arm. “I fucking need you,” he says and squeezes Gerard’s elbow before going to help Mona down the stairs.
They pile into the car and Gerard has a moment of disconnect when Frank slides into the back seat with Mona, and Gerard sees him clutching her hand in the rear view mirror.
But this isn’t a dream and the hospital is only four blocks away, and before Gerard even has time to process that, they are pulling up in front of it and Frank is racing inside to get a nurse and a wheel chair.
Once they’ve gone through the sliding doors, Gerard goes off to find a park. His heart has slowed down somewhat, but echoes of his nightmare are still banging around in his head and he feels disconnected, chilled. He thinks about the way Mona was clinging to Frank and he feels obsolete, a third wheel. He walks back to the hospital doors slowly and by the time he’s in the lobby his husband and the mother of his child are nowhere to be found.
He asks for them at reception and is unsurprised when the nurse looks him up and down and raises her eyebrows. “Only family are allowed into the birthing area, Mr...?”
“Way, and I am family. I’m the - one of the fathers...um .”
“Mr Iero is already in with Miss Trevi,” she says , frowning.
Gerard laughs nervously. “It’s Mr Way-Iero, with a- a hyphen, yeah...and I’m Mr Way, his husband and Mona Trevi is having our baby.” He looks at her pointedly. “So...”
“Oh!” The nurse turns scarlet and shuffles through some papers. “Oh, Mr Way...I’m...ah...”
“What the hell are you doing out here?!” Frank comes barrelling round the corner and grabs hold of Gerard’s arm. The contact is like Frank’s flicked Gerard’s switch. All he can see is Frank’s wide eyed terrified face. “Mona is asking for you.”
“She is?” Gerard asks, butterflies surge up in his tummy. He forgets the flustered nurse almost immediately and follows Frank through the doors into the birthing ward.
If he’d thought about it before he would have imagined a birthing ward to be near pandemonium, with nurses running about boiling water and fetching blankets. He figures that has more to do with all the old movies he used to watch with his Grandma than reality, because the reality is a quiet, beige corridor and a smiling nurse gesturing to them to follow her.
“Mona’s ready, Mr Iero. She’s started pushing.”
“Can we...should we go in?” Gerard is frozen at the door way. “Should I?”
“Yes!” Frank is pushing him in the back through the doors and Mona is there, on her side, a sheet over her legs, a blue and white hospital gown on.
“Bene, bene...come and hold my hand. I think I broke Frank’s,” she says when she sees him. She reaches for him and Gerard reaches for her and they connect. Finally.
Gerard smooths the hair back off her face as Frank puts more ice chips in her cup and hands it to her.
“Not long now Mona,” the midwife says, peering under the sheet.
Mona winces and tries to get up on her knees. Frank leans over and helps her, letting her pull on his arm and taking her weight. “I don’t think I can stand,” she says, “let me lean.”
“Okay then, sweetheart. Here we go...” Frank takes all her weight and Mona starts to push.
Gerard has never felt this much fear, elation and horror at one time before. It goes on for hours, so long that he’s complete exhausted, and yet every time he thinks’ it’s over there’s another wave, another contraction, another round of trying to sooth and encourage and share in it, somehow.
And Frank. Frank he sees almost in a whole new light. It’s not that he didn’t know Frank had inner reserves of tenacity, energy and control - no one who drags a business with the whole world against it, up by its boot straps and makes it work could have anything less - but Gerard is stunned by Frank. His husband has a cut off point, usually, but tonight it is as if Frank could do this for days if he needs to.
As he watches Frank cover up a wince when Mona’s grip on his arm slips and her nails rake the soft underside of his forearm, Gerard has never been prouder to call him his.
“You’re doing so great, Mona. Okay, not much longer...not much longer,” he says and his eyes flick to Gerard. “You should sit down, Gee, before you fall down.”
“No...no...I’m...” Gerard can’t take his eyes off Frank. He reaches for him and curls his hand in the back of his sweat damp tee-shirt. “I’m good,” he stammers. “I’m good.”
Mona hasn’t spoken any English for the last hour and a half. But it’s okay, apparently Frank has learnt to read minds, or speak Italian - whatever, he knows exactly what Mona needs and he there for her the second she decides she wants to get on her knees.
The mid wife reaches between her legs, and she’s smiling when she looks up at Gerard as tells him the baby’s head is out. “Would you like to see?”
“Can I?”
“Can you see her, Gee? Can you see her?” says Frank, and for the first time some of his calm slips and Gerard can hear the hysteria in his voice.
Gerard looks, and he sees his child, the top of her face, then her nose.
“I can see her face! You’re doing so great, Mona. Just a little more...just a little more...She’s coming ...she coming...”
*
Grace Lee Iero-Way is born at 5:56am on Tuesday, October 22 at the Beth Israel Medical centre in Newark NJ.
Her mother holds her and lets her latch on naturally, finding her own way up from her belly to her breast, while both her dads sob on each other’s shoulders and tell her how incredible she is, how perfect, how wanted.
Of all the days he has been happy, including the day Frank told him he loved him, and the day Frank asked him to marry him and Gerard said yes, and the day he said “I do” and meant the rest of his life, this is the greatest day of Gerard’s life.
Mona is asleep in the ward bed and Frank is sitting in the world’s most uncomfortable looking chair with their daughter lying asleep on his chest when Gerard comes back from the cafeteria. He stands in the door way and watches Frank stroking her soft pink skin, listens to him murmuring her name. And he thinks, this is it, this is the happiest I have ever been.
Frank looks up at him, his soft, tired eyes shining and Gerard thinks, yeah, his too.
“Mona says we should take her home tonight,” says Frank.
“We should, then,” says Gerard sitting in the chair next to Frank and putting his coffee on the bedside cabinet.
“I guess...but...” Gerard sees they way Frank looks at Mona.
“Frankie, it’s okay. Mona and I talked about this. A lot. She wanted us to take the baby away as soon as possible, and she never intended to come back to the house after.”
“We can’t just leave her here...”
“We’re not,” says Gerard and he’s glad they had this all planned out. “We’ll go home and then tomorrow, I’ll come and pick Mona up, if she’s ready, and take to the Regent. She flies out to Italy next week. We’ll see her again before then though.”
“Oh,” Frank says, and Gerard feels it too. Mona. She’s given them so much. How can she be leaving so soon already.
“It’s not like...she said...she said she would love to hear from us, from time to time, but...” Gerard strokes the downy soft hairs on Grace’s head. “She’s a smart girl, Frankie. She’s doing what’s best for her and us...and Grace.”
Frank is very close. They lean together and Gerard presses his mouth to Frank’s, firm and sure and full of how much he loves him. “I love you, baby daddy,” he whispers and leans down to press his nose against his daughter’s head.