FicWad

Title: Strangers From Within
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Frank Iero/Gerard Way, Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie
P.O.V: Third Person’s
Summary: Frank Iero grew up in what he considered a fairly normal town, as far as he knew West Grayton wasn’t anything special, just a dreary valley with not much to do and too many bored dickheads. He definitely never thought something interesting finally happening would be this dangerous, but when his best friend’s brother returns home from college, people all over the town begin unearthing mysteries that should never be solved and uncovering secrets whose truths should never be told. Armed with less weapons than your average American Football team, Frank seems to be going up against the amassed armies of hell. As you do.


OR

That summer everyone went punk ass and Frank had to fix it.

Chapter Word Count: 4209
Disclaimer: Complete and utter fiction, you’d be silly if you think this actually happened anyway.


Chapter One

Frank Iero was uncomfortable. Not only was he uncomfortable, but he was also cold, hungry and upside down. It had not been Frank’s day. All said and done, being upside down was not Frank's favourite. His favourite orientation would probably be horizontal, because horizontal meant sleep. Or sex.

If Frank could have chosen a day to be hung upside down from a tree by great gaggle of buffoons, he probably wouldn't have chosen today. This is mainly because it's a Monday, and Monday is 'Let Frank Be Day'. Tuesday is normally 'Let Frank have a coughing fit akin to a super volcano erupting in his lungs every few minutes Day.' Frank's mum insisted that this is because 'Let Frank Be Day' generally involved Frank falling in water. Even in the height of summer when water deep enough to fall in is a rarity. Frank was not convinced. He thinks that the universe just hates Tuesdays and Frank in equal amounts.

"How did they get you up that high?" Frank momentarily stopped fiddling to laces of his sneakers, which happened to be holding him up, to stare down in the direction of the voice, which was attached to a face that was laughing at him. Or more pointedly trying not to laugh and failing kind of miserably.

“A hugely complicated pulley system involving my own shoelaces and a lot of suppressed rage." Frank replied, only entertaining the idea of lying for a few seconds.

"Did you kick anyone in the face this time? Oh wait, you can't reach their faces." Mikey Way, Frank's best and most sarcastic dick of a friend, dropped his messenger bag to the floor and began climbing up the tree to Frank's rescue. If Frank could name anyone as hero of the year, he would always say it was Mikey... even if he did insist on shoving Frank into his own locker whenever he was bored.


"Aha aha ha ha. You're fucking hilarious. Now get me down.'

'Rude.'

'I can still headbutt you from here.'

Mikey sighed, as though freeing his supposed best friend was a huge burden on him, and continued to climb up the tree to cut him down.

'I thought today was Let Frank Be Day?' Mikey asked, watching Frank sprawl onto the floor, the impact temporarily winding him.

'Apparently-' apparently his lungs has decided that they'd had enough of his shit and packed up entirely. 'Apparently-' Oh no, there we go. Oxygen. Woo. 'Apparently they didn't get my memo.'

"What a shame? You wrote it on Brendon's locker. I suppose he can't read,” Mikey said as he jumped down and pounded a fist against Frank's back.

Frank spluttered and shoved him off, 'Jesus Christ. No need to actually try and murder me.'

“Oh don’t worry, your lungs are already doing that all by themselves,” Both boys leaned back on their elbows under the shade of the leaves. It was one of those days where the air was really cold and the sky was grey, it felt like it would snow if it was a little warmer, but instead they had to deal with looking like dragons every time they breathed, rather than lying down making snow angels.

“So what’re you doing this weekend?” Frank asked Mikey as he pulled a cigarette out of the back pocket of his skinny jeans and lit it up with his favourite zippo. He’d found it in a gutter last summer and started using it regularly after he’d cleaned it up because it was the first time he didn’t have to steal matches from the kitchen.

Mikey shrugs and fiddles with the zip on his hoodie before accepting the cigarette from Frank and inhaling deeply. “I don’t know, my brother’s coming home from college for the first time since Christmas, I’ll probably hang out with him.”

“Your brother… Gerard, right?”

Mikey nodded, exhaling slowly, watching the smoke curl upwards, 'What's it like, him being away all the time?'

'It's kinda shitty.' He said, quietly, 'But at least he's out of the house and- you know. Doing stuff.' Frank nodded, like he had half an idea what the hell Mikey was on about. Siblings were not his forte. Nor was doing stuff; not that he was lazy, just that school was boring and it was so much more fun to piss people off than attempt to learn stuff that wouldn't stay in his head.

“How come you don’t talk about him that much? You said he knows Ray Toro, the library dude, right? And Bryar down at the record store? He sounds kind of rad.”

“Eh,” Mikey shrugs, “Not much to tell you, he’s a bit weird.”

“I thought you said weird was cool.”

“It is.”

“Then your brother’s cool.”

“No not really, not in this town.”

Then Frank got it. Mikey’s brother must have had some past experience here that wasn’t exactly non-shitty and that’s why Mikey didn’t like to mention him. Huh, Frank wondered if the school records had anything on Gerard.

"Oh. Alright." He said, even though it wasn't, even though Frank practically burned with curiosity. But Frank knew Mikey, and his voice was closed off and cool and quiet, and that was the warning sign that you ignored at your peril.

"Yeah." Mikey replied, sounding distracted, probably more out of politeness than anything else. They sat on the slightly damp ground for a while longer, in silence apart from the crackling of the tobacco slowly burning down. Dark was starting to peep at the edges of the sky and the cigarettes had long since burnt down, by the time Mikey muttered,

'We should go. I got early curfew tonight.'

'Alright.' Frank said, easily, standing up, a little unsteady after so long on the ground. "I'll see you at school tomorrow then."

"Sure man. School." And then he was sloping off, in the direction of the Way residence. Frank would have followed him, but his shoulders were set, and that was another warning sign.

It was clear something was off about this, Mikey’s brother had come home once before and Mikey had been the living embodiment of excitement. He’d practically spent the entire week bouncing all over the place like a hyperactive five year old, he’d been more restless than Frank and that was definitely saying something.

Frank wasn’t usually keen to pry into his best friend’s life, Mikey tended to have a good aim when it came to throwing punches, but curiosity was going to eat him if he didn’t find out what was going on soon. In fact, it wouldn’t just eat him; it would drag him down to the depths of Hell, rip his face up, pull out his teeth and then swallow him whole. Yup.


*

Half an hour later, after weaving through several alleyways and taking the long route home just to avoid the church- Cemetery Drive was creepy man- Frank finally plonked himself down at his computer desk and brushed his fringe out of his eyes.

It wouldn’t be hard for him to hack into Our Lady of Sorrows High’s computer records, hell Frank had done it a million times before, just because he didn’t like paying attention in class and occasionally mouthed of teacher’s, didn’t mean he wasn’t a freaking genius.

He was modest too; he’d never even told Mikey he could do this (more than a few times or a few dozen times.) Mikey had acted like he didn't care, but he was totally impressed, Frank could tell. Frank was pretty impressive, so even Mikey had to be impressed.
But anyway, back to the plot, Frank knew what he was doing here, and it really didn't take long before he was scrolling down the alphabet (They just had to be Way didn't they, couldn't have been Adams or something), looking for the possibly infamous Gerard.
Frank had met Gerard, or seen him in passing and nodded in the way that you do to your best friend's older brother, and he seemed to be pretty much the living embodiment of a comic book nerd. Not that there was anything wrong with that, just that Frank was struggling to connect Bad Ass Gerard (who he had totally made up, but was pretty awesome) with Socially Awkward And Needs A Wash Gerard.
Maybe the school records would help. Or maybe Gerard would be a straight A student with one detention for wearing nail polish or something-
Oh. Or maybe not.
Definitely not.

A straight D student with a ‘tendency to fight with others’ and an ‘aggressive nature towards staff and pupils’ only part of what described Gerard Way in the information box. Frank let his eyes scan over the mass of text, occasionally picking up words such as ‘strange’ and ‘disappears’ and from what he gathered, Way had been picked on a lot for wearing eye makeup and colouring his nails in with black sharpie.

“Sounds a little familiar…” Frank muttered to himself as he glanced at his own sharpied nails.

After a minute, he exited the school database and decided to hit Google for more answers. Hesitantly, he typed Gerard’s name into the box and added ‘West Grayton’ on the end so he didn’t just get a bunch of random results.

“Holy shit,” Frank whispered to himself as more than seventy-eight different articles and sits popped up, all about the same Gerard Way that he was investigating.

He was about to exit the box due to sheer terror at the idea of finding out too much, when the words ‘criminal’ and ‘record’ caught his eye.

‘Gerard Arthur Way acquired a criminal record on June 5th, 2007, when he was caught vandalising the gym walls with spray paint. This record was wiped when he turned 18 years of age, but he reoffended again not soon after by setting a forest fire on the edge of his hometown West Grayton. He has repeatedly been sent in and out of therapy with reports of him hallucinating and trying to ward people away from imaginary dangers. Somehow, he managed to get a scholarship to an art school in New York, I personal-‘

Frank shut the tab before the bullshit on the screen got even worse. Who would even blog about someone like that? Must’ve been someone that knew Gerard Way personally.

Where the hell did the geeky little comic book artist that he’d met go?

Frank skipped tea, playing the sick card, he felt a little bad for guilting his mum, but not really. He probably was going to get sick. Tomorrow was a Tuesday, after all.
Truth was, Frank didn't want to do anything. He couldn't open his computer without hovering the mouse over the search bar, fingers poised and ready to type out the name he was trying to avoid; he couldn't play video games or watch a film because he only really had mindless violence (Frank was a cultured little shit but, whatever Ryan said, films were about explosives) and that lead to him wondering whether they'd locked Gerard in the little room Frank got chucked into once or twice a week for fighting some other dickhead; playing the guitar was out of the question, the only short conversation he'd had with Socially Awkward Needs A Wash Gerard (who apparently was a lie) had been about his Misfits shirt as they both waited for Mikey to get the fuck out of the bathroom one morning; and he definitely, absolutely could not go eat dinner with his mum. Because his mum was psychic or some shit and she would /know/. The woman was some kind of demon.
So, when Frank was dangerously close to starting his homework, he decided the best thing to do would be to try and sleep off the cold he would inevitably have by tomorrow. Pre-emptive sleeping.
The last thing he was expecting was for a pebble to fly through his window, followed by a muffled, 'Who the fuck has their window open in February? What the fuck?"
Nope. Frank was not expecting that at all.
So naturally, as any irritated teenager with a lot on their mind would do, he threw the rock out. Unsatisfied when he got no shrieks of pain in return, he stalked over to his window, ready to poke his head out and scream at whoever the fuck was being a dick when suddenly, a face popped up in front of his.

Frank didn’t scream, not at all, he merely let out a very manly battle cry and landed on his butt on the floor.

“GABE YOU ASSHOLE!” Frank squawked indignantly as his ridiculous tall friend clambered into his room, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

“You should’ve seen your face man, oh my god, that was the fucking best thing…”

Frank stood up and narrowed his eyes, huffing slightly.

“Don’t sulk, little’n, for Ryan and Gabe are here to bring you great cheer!”

“A),” Frank started, “I am not sulking. B) I am not little, and C) you guys don’t bring cheer, you bring arrogance and eye makeup so what’re you doing in my bedroom?”

“Well,” Ryan Ross’ voice was muffled as he slid through the window, “We heard something around town.”

Frank was not a sucker for gossip. He was not. Except he was.

“Yeah? What?”

“A load of people who used to go to our school are coming back into town and they’re acting real weird, whenever someone asks why they’ve all suddenly decided to have family reunions and such thy just say it’s a lucky coincidence,” Ryan said.

“But the thing is, Wentz, you know the senior in Mikey’s class? Yeah, he said he saw Alec Johnson’s older brother Blake loading a bunch of guns and stuff into his garage, apparently he’s never been interested in weapons before.”

Frank reached, deep in thought, for the banana he knew Gabe kept in his jacket pocket at all times and munched on it slowly, swallowing before he said, "I thought they were pacifists."

"Yeah." Ryan said, nibbling at some indiscriminate cereal bar, also stolen from Gabe, "So did Alec."

"Oh!" Frank dropped the banana, and scrambled for his laptop.

"Oh?"

"Oh." He confirmed, scrolling back through his history till he found the page about Gerard. "Mikey's brother's back. You know, Gerard?"

"Comic book dude?" Gabe settled onto the floor, staring at Frank as if he'd gone slightly insane, which Frank thought was a little fucking hypocritical, considering his entrance,

"What's he got to do with it?"

"Read that.' Frank pushed the laptop over. "And Mikey was all weird about it, left hours before his curfew. Wasn't even excited."

"Holy shit." Gabe muttered, scrolling down. "This dude is fucking scary."

"I know! He's done all this shit, it's crazy."

"...I thought he was a nerd."

"Yeah. So did that dude whose leg he broke, probably."

“Who’s a nerd?” The group whipped around to see Mikey and Mrs Iero stood in Frank’s doorway. Ryan slammed down the laptop lid… rather unfortunately onto Gabe’s fingers.

“No one!” Frank said, “Just some dude in this story we were reading, y’know those online comic book things, yeah.”

Mikey stared at Frank suspiciously, completely ignoring Gab who was hopping around, squealing and sucking on his poor, abused fingers, while Ryan tried to calm him down.

The Frank realised he’d dropped his banana, and apparently so did Mrs Iero.

“So when did these two get here? I thought you said you weren’t hungry Frank. Are you sneaking out to a party? What have I said about sneaking out?! You don’t do it, especially on a school night when you’re feeling ‘ill’?”

“Ah Linda,” Ryan glided over, Frank’s mother had always had a soft spot for Ross and his perfectly styled hair, “This was actually Gabe and I’s doing, we climbed in through the window you see because Frankie here wasn’t answering his phone and no one had answered the front door. He’s not sneaking out, in fact I was just making sure his had some vitamins in him just in case.”

They all looked down at the smushed pile of banana goo on the floor. What a whole lot of good those vitamins would do now.

“Oh…” Said Linda, “Well in that case, Mikey’s here to see you, he’s says it’s important. Call me if you guys need snacks and make sure you boys get home before you worry your parents.”
And with that, she was off to do laundry again.

They were all just relaxing, until Mikey shut the door and glared at them. Dammit, thought Frank, he always sees through lies.

Mikey, in fact, was only marginally less psychic than Miss Dwe, Frank's tutor, and right now he was looking at them with such a similar expression to Miss Dwe's bitch face, that if he'd been wearing a skirt, Frank would have struggled to tell them apart in a line up.

"Hey Mikey..." Gabe said, in a truly weak attempt to diffuse the tension. Mikey totally ignored him and turned his gaze on Frank with such intensity that he actually shrivelled a little.

"Frank Iero you fucker. I told you not to get involved."

"You never said that!" Although they both knew perfectly well that Mikey didn't have to say things for Frank to understand.

"You know what I mean, fuckface."

"Fine, fine okay you told me not to research your brother-"

"And what did you do? Went and researched his brother-"

"Shut up Gabe." Ryan shoved the asshole to the floor in a miraculous feat of mind over matter (Gabe being huge and Ryan being a spindly spider child) before he could cause any more damage, where he lay, looking both wounded and surprised, aiming for sympathy. But ruining it by giggling.

"You still did it, Frank." Mikey folded his arms, "I said."

"I was interested!"

"Don't be!"

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because getting killed over something that you don't understand is a crappy way to go. Watch a Transformers movie and go to bed Frankie. Or you actually will get sick."

The was a beat of extraordinarily awkward silence, rivalled by no other awkward silence that the boys had ever experienced, and then Ryan piped up, “Why does researching your brother suddenly involve death?”

You could practically see the cogs in Mikey’s mind screeching to a halt and squealing ‘FATAL ERROR. FATAL ERROR.’

“It was an expression,” He snapped back.

“Clearly it wasn’t,” Frank said, “Because you don’t argue or yell at us unless it’s a matter of life or death and the last time you yelled at Ryan was when I had a panic attack and couldn’t breathe and you thought I was dying.”

Now he had nothing to say. They all stood there facing each other, one gigantic lunatic with an extreme love for the colour pink, one guitar playing, expert make up artist with a Ryhawk, a midget who actually looked kind of scary in his ripped jeans and Doc Martens and an awkward, usually incredible at lying, guy with nothing to say.

“Wentz was right, you do look like a robot when you’re thinking, Mikes,” Gabe said thoughtfully, earning him a smack in the face from Ryan.

“Ow!”

“Shut up!”

“Right, okay.”

“Mikey?” Frank said, “Anything else to offer?”

"No. Not really."

"That was an expression too. An expression that means, 'Tell me what's going on or so help me I will get my mum to call your mum'-"

"Dude that is low." Ryan let out a low whistle under his breath as the threat hung in the room, all awkward and lumbering.

"Lowest of the low. Lower than a professional Limbo dancer-"

"Would you shut the fuck up for two seconds Saporta?" Frank snapped, staring at Mikey as 'SOLUTION UNKNOWN' flashed all over his face.

"Yeah Gabe.' Mikey said, weirdly softly for the panic written on his face, "Shut up." Gabe, credit where it's due, didn't even huff, clearly taking in the gravity of the situation for once.

Frank chewed on his lip, worrying it between his teeth till he tasted blood, waiting for Mikey to say something, anything. Silence was a worrying sign. They were silent for so long that when Mikey sighed, loud and annoyed and defeated, the three seated boys jumped.

"Fine. Assholes. I'll tell you." Frank didn't interrupt, he wasn't stupid and he hoped Gabe and Ryan weren't either. A mostly vain hope, but he was an optimistic guy. "There's- This town is wrong. Like, really fucking wrong. And some people are angry about it. And you're not supposed to know ‘cause- Well- You guys are kind of green."

Looking between them, Ryan still working away at that cereal bar like a fucking squirrel, and Gabe in his bright pink button down, Frank couldn't find the motivation to disagree. He wanted to, but he felt it'd be a little ridiculous. And he'd had enough humiliation for one night, thank you very much.

“Whatd’you mean fy wong?” Ryan spoke through a mouthful of cereal bar.

“Uh… well…”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Not exactly.”

Frank was face-palming before he could stop himself.

“Mikey,” Gabe groaned, “you’re supposed to be the intelligent one here.”

“Look all I know is our town is currently having some kind of existential crisis because a group of stupid teenagers found out some things they shouldn’t have and now my brother’s coming back and people heard so it’s like Return of the fucking Townies and-“

“Whoa, Mikes, slow down and explain okay, sit,” Frank motioned at the bed and Mikey did as he was told.

“It started when Gee was a freshman, I was twelve…”

Running, running, running. Footsteps pounding behind him, he was slowing, his little legs finding it harder and harder to carry him as he panted onwards. No! Don’t stop! You’ll get caught Gerard! They’ll catch you!

“TAG!” Mikey declared joyfully as he caught up to his older brother, “You’re it.”
Gerard grinned and rested his hands on his knees as he gasped for air. Mikey was such a fast little runner; it kind of made him proud.

“I’m bored of this,” Gerard said and Mikey groaned.

“You always get bored when you looooose!”
Gerard laughed and ruffled his younger brother’s hair, then suggested they play Hide and Seek, as it was Mikey’s favourite game. So in a few short minutes, Gerard was off running to hide, leaving Mikey counting by an old oak tree.

“Eight… Nine… Ten! READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!” And he ran off to search, but he couldn’t find Gerard anywhere.

It must’ve taken several hours for Mikey to give up, he had a high stamina, but after a while he began to worrying. The summer sky was darkening and dusk was right around the corner, what was worse was that he could see fog in the distance; slowly creepy towards the woods they were playing in. Mother always wanted them home before dark, so surely Gerard would have come looking for him by now?

Maybe he’d gone back to the house….

Mikey was about to run back home and check if his brother had cheated, when a shiver rolled down his spine. No. Gee wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t just leave his twelve year old brother out in the woods.

CRUNCH.

Mikey spun around in fright. There was nothing there to break any twigs with its feet though. He must have been imagining things.

…Until he heard it again. Then again. Then once more.

Slowly he turned around and found himself facing nothing but fog. He didn’t know why it terrified him so much, but boy did he run fast. Faster than that boy Ryan in the grade below him even. He ran until he was bursting through his front door, screaming and yelling about not being able to find his brother, and finally collapsing into his mother’s arms with streams of tears running down his young bespectacled face.

It took four separate search parties, a pack of sniffer dogs, the town’s entire Police Department, most of the townspeople and fifty-seven point three hours exactly to find Gerard Way bloody and broken in a ditch.

His neck and wrists were slashed up so bad that he’d lost the majority of the blood in his body and the paramedics were certain he wouldn’t survive. They weren’t quite sure how he did. Not only did he survive, but also he woke up only an hour after being put in the bed in the bright white room and he grinned like a child on Christmas morning.

The doctor’s said it had been attempted suicide, but Mikey knew it wasn’t. Who goes off in the middle of game to kill themselves? Also, they found no such objects he could have used to make those slashes around him, but then again, adults make excuses for everything and just said ‘He discarded them elsewhere before he fell unconscious.’

Gerard had always been a cheerful, smiling, completely sane kid and even though he got pushed around a bit at school, he had a lot of friends and just brushed off the rude comments around his clothes with ease.

No, something was different, Mikey had concluded that the second his brother had opened his eyes.

Something was wrong.




-------------------

So hi! Thanks for reading if you did, there's more to come! We're excited to write this actually, it started because we were playing consequences... we have the same story posted on Livejournal from the user catchingrevenge and on Archive of Our Own with the user Catching_Revenge.

We hope you enjoy!


Megan and Flora xoxox