Archive of Our Own

Gerard Way’s transgender awakening, like so many before him, starts with red.

Some upperclassman punches him in the mouth. It isn’t really important why, only that the fist comes out of fucking nowhere, and here’s Gerard getting to his feet, tilting his head back to keep from choking on his own nosebleed, hands stained, panting ragged, thinking, What the fuck, thinking, This asshole is built like a brick shithouse and I am going to die, thinking, I am going to die and then I will fail my Bio midterm because I’ll be fucking dead and dead people can’t remember the Bone Dance.

The kid spits, “You dress like a girl. You fight like one too?"

Gerard, not for the first time, seriously contemplates it. She says, “I'm the best girl you've seen in your life,” crushes her fingers into a fist just like her grandmother taught her, and hits him back.

Stop. Rewind.

Gerard Way’s transgender awakening starts with red, smeared across the back of his hand.

He shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t here. He left the room, like, yesterday, honest. He‘s only returning some clothes. Mikey has a tendency to get bored halfway through laundry duty and fold everything together in a pile, faded jeans and Ma’s pink blouse and those Batman boxers, the ones that may’ve started out with a single owner but eventually joined the temporally-displaced joint Mikey-Gerard clothing kingdom. This domain also includes but is not limited to a threadbare leather jacket and the one unstained button-up in the whole house, for special occasions, like when Donna Way feels guilty enough to drag one or both of them to church.

Gerard didn’t intend to touch anything. But he also didn’t intend to be born, and that happened whether he likes it or not. It’s inevitable, really. Gut reaction. Dirty secret. Everything just looked so prim and girly and not meant for him, and he never could resist the chance to push things out of order, press the envelope to bursting, bend the rules, make a little chaos. He glances down at the mess of lipsticks and eyeliners on his mother's dresser, thick black mascaras and soft glittery eyeshadows, perfume bottles lined up in rows like delicate dolls, and wonders what else he could try on. He picks up the eyeliner.

He doesn’t know how the women in magazines make this shit so perfect, like it’s easy. Practice, or whatever. He doesn’t have any of that. He’s never touched makeup before. On his Ma it looks nice enough, but different; like a defense mechanism, a shield instead of a gun. On him it looks messy and nervous and sort of like he’s been punched in the face and he loves it. It looks fucking fantastic, totally Rocky Horror. It feels right.

Maybe he could even be mistaken for a girl, if he keeps his mouth shut and wears the right kind of shirt. That seems important.

He swallows hard and rubs at his lower lip with an already-pinkish thumb, trying to wipe away the stain, like if he can make it go away he won't have to deal with this sudden desire to wear it everywhere, all the time, to school, in front of his friends. He can just forget it ever happened. Gerard Way never tried on lipstick, Gerard Way never had confusing gender feelings in the middle of his mother’s bedroom.

Teenagers are supposed to do weird shit like this, right? It's probably healthy. Keeps them going, like coffee and cynicism. It was just one time.

He slips the tube of lipstick into his pocket. It’s heavy against his thigh, solid and impossible to ignore. His heart pounds out an iambic guilt, be normal be normal be normal be normal, but he can’t take it back now. He won’t.

It knocks against his hip as he walks back to his room, burning a hole through the denim, and he thinks about the art he could make, how he could press down until the tip is just a crush of sunset, on canvas, on skin, the things he could draw, the ways he could change, flip mirror-ways like a shapeshifter, an iron honesty and a red drowning like war. But Gerard’s interest is not purely artistic, no matter how much he wishes he could believe that. It just looks good on him. It makes him feel like someone else entirely, confident in a different skin, a better skin. Like putting on a mask.

Or taking one off.

*

Lipstick is a gateway drug.

After a month Gerard has amassed quite a makeup collection, some of it stolen from his Ma’s dresser, some of it lifted from shops. He’s careful with the bolder, noticeable colors, only wearing them when he’s alone in the house, which is hardly ever, unless he skips last period and walks at a pace so brisk he wheezes. That’ll teach him not to smoke. Theoretically, of course.

Lindsey taught him how to apply eyeliner in the second floor girls’ bathroom last Wednesday, after she stumbled across the stash in his room. Literally stumbled across it, head-over-heels, slapstick banana peel-style, scraped her knee on the corner of his bed as she went down and laughed herself sick over the whole thing. Post-bandage, she carefully considered the purple eye pencil her boot heel crushed by mistake and said, “I’ll replace it for you later." Gerard wanted to kiss her. Lindsey has been his best friend since kindergarten, when an Important Art Idea tugged insistently at him in the middle of naptime, and she smuggled him crayons under her blankie one by one, all pigtails and mischief. She never outgrew the pigtails, and she's never failed him since. He doesn’t know why he thought this would be any different.

After that, Lindsey does his makeup before homeroom every morning, squirreled away in one of the stalls, one hand on his shoulder to steady him. Her grip on the eyeliner is true even when the other girls in the bathroom bang on the door to tell her to hurry up, and her focus doesn't waver when she hollers back at them to fuck off. She's scary persistent and wicked cool under pressure. Gerard would hate to see her with a gun. Love. Gerard would love to see her with a gun.

“If there's a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear devastation and half of humanity gets eaten or fried all to hell, I want to be on your team, okay?”

“That's a promise I can't make, kid, and you know it,” Lindsey says, and puts the cap back on the eye pencil. It's blue today, dark enough it looks black unless you're up close, and she used it on herself earlier, while he watched. They match now. “Who knows what'll happen out there? You could go rogue. You could get all your skin sizzled off by radiation. Like a baked potato.”

“Or I could develop superpowers.”

Lindsey hums thoughtfully and packs up her bag, unlocking the stall door. “What would you get? Flight? Telepathy? Ambiguous sexuality that labels itself for no man?”

“I have one of those already,” Gerard points out, eyeing his reflection in the grainy bathroom mirror. “So do you, asshole.”

Lindsey gasps. “You didn't tell me you could read minds! Quick, what am I thinking?”

“You're thinking, ‘Stop checking your damn makeup, you know I did it perfect and we'll be late to first period.’”

“Ooh, you are good." Lindsey tugs at his sleeve and hauls him out of the bathroom, walking at a punishing pace. Her classic Lyn-Z pigtails start to come loose within a few steps, and Gerard absentmindedly reaches out to tuck a Clark Kent-esque curl behind her ear. They're still walking, so it's a shaky attempt, knuckles grazing her cheek, and the curl only bounces back, but Lindsey smiles anyway.

“You look nice, Gee,” she says, and he flushes happily.

“Do you think,” Gerard starts as they veer into AP English, and shuts his mouth with a snap. Do you think I could borrow your lipstick sometime too? he wanted to ask, but he's just remembered where they are, and can't make himself say it anymore. Do you think I could borrow your lipstick, do you think I could be the only boy wearing full makeup in the whole state of New Jersey, do you think I could get punched in the fucking face, do you think I could reveal myself as a weirdo to all my friends? Do you think you'd still talk to me?

“Do you think if we really did have telepathy,” he says instead, “and we tried to read each other's minds, would I hear your thoughts and vice versa, or would we both hear our own? Or just, like, nothing? Fucking... static. White space. Or would it cause a temporal rift, the universe ripped all to shit? Paradox? Which?”

Lindsey considers him, eyebrows quirked. “That, Gee,” she says ominously, tapping the end of her pen against the soft baby fat of his cheek, “is a question that should never be answered.”

They never do answer it, but when Gerard gets home, he finds a brand new mascara hidden in the bottom of his backpack, lodged between a textbook and Kurt Vonnegut. It's waterproof, still wrapped in slightly-battered plastic, and it's his. So maybe Lindsey has telepathy after all.

*

If lipstick is the gateway, then internet forums are kept in the front hall of the house, in little glass cases, to show off to guests, to make the owners feel important. Internet forums are to Gerard’s nervous gender identity spiral as Leonardo da Vinci was to the Mona Lisa: they clearly paint the picture.

The first time Gerard reads the word transgender, he is eighteen years old. An hour of rigorous Googling later, the first time he reads the words genderqueer, nonbinary, agender, genderfluid, demigender, novigender, gendervoid, and about a thousand others, he is still eighteen, at least in theory, but he feels his heart— stop. Luckily for him, it eventually restarts, with a passion.

There he is, cross-legged on his bed, with his clunky dinosaur of a Dell laptop open in his lap and his sketchbook flipped to a pencil drawing of a crow he did during third track, currently discovering the secrets of the universe, or at least of his own personal black hole, and the only thing he can think is, If I’m transgender, do I have to give Mikey his underwear back? which, in hindsight, is a ridiculous first thought to have when you’ve just been destroyed from the inside out like a supernova and reborn like a jump-started Toyota in a lightning storm.

Gerard is not emotionally ready to give Mikey his underwear back, because Gerard never has underwear clean, and these are comfortable, with the bat signal on them. They’re fitted perfectly to his thighs, because he steals them so often. Really, they should be his, by rights. It’s only justice. Batman loves justice. Gerard loves these fucking boxers. Gerard also loves knowing himself— herself?— themself? Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

“I’m transgender,” Gerard says. It’s barely a whisper. “I am transgender. I am... a girl? A bit? A bit of a girl.” He pauses. His stomach twists. “No. No, okay, this is weird, stop speaking now.”

Gerard takes a deep breath through his nose, even though his room smells kind of dusty and basement-y and like a teenager lives in it, and then he sets the laptop aside and stands up. He needs a drink. His eye catches the sketch from earlier, and the stick of liquid eyeliner lying next to it. Funny, that he stumbled across the revelation of a lifetime because he was trying to learn how to wing his eyeliner, and all the tutorials were built for conventionally attractive cis girl faces— all but one, by a trans woman. Gerard has a feeling he’s going to be watching a lot of videos by Youtube user zoeyzombie.

He stomps up the stairs, because basement stairs make satisfying creaking noises, and into the kitchen, where Mikey is sitting, eating cereal. His glasses are slipping down his nose.

“Hey,” says Mikey.

“Hey,” says Gerard, vaguely embarrassed for no particular reason. He feels like he’s been caught doing something wrong. “Are those Cheerios? It’s, like, eight pm.”

“Yep,” says Mikey. He pops the P, and takes a slightly aggressively bite of Cheerios, possibly to spite Gerard. Milk dribbles down his chin. “Want any?”

“I’m good. I need something stronger. Vodka, perhaps.”

Mikey makes a concerned face. It’s an exceedingly subtle change from his regular face, since Mikey popped out of the womb with perpetual deadpan, but if you know him well enough, you can see his mouth tilt in just so, his eyebrows inch infinitesimally closer together. “Bad headspace tonight, Gee?”

“A little,” Gerard admits. “You ever think about gender identity?”

Mikey frowns even more. “I guess. I don’t really worry about it. Do you?”

Gerard spreads his hands in a hell if I know gesture, and pulls up a chair at the kitchen table. “Human beings are just so complicated, you know? We’ve got so many different pieces, like a puzzle, but sometimes you don’t have all of them or the colors don’t match up or you can’t make sense of it. Everything is a big mystery, and the more shit you learn the less you seem to understand. You ever feel like that?”

“All the fucking time.”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, quietly. “Mikes, I think...” His breath hitches. He can tell Mikey, right? He tells Mikey everything. Finally, in a rush, he says, “I think I don’t like being a boy.”

Mikey looks at him for a long moment. He takes another bite of his cereal, slow, calculating. He says, “Okay. So what do you like being?”

“I don’t know. I just think I’m not really good at... boyness. I’m not... masculine. Like, at all.”

“No shit,” Mikey snorts.

“You know what nonbinary means?”

“Duh,” Mikey says, kind of boggled, like, obviously, of course, everyone knows that, like it’s required reading and Gerard just missed the memo. “The hell do you think Pete Wentz talks my ear off about all day? New wave goth bands and gender politics and how many tattoos they’re gonna have after they graduate. I’ve basically been dragged into a cult. They’re cute, though.”

Gerard’s mouth sort of— does a thing, sideways. “They?”

“Mmhm,” Mikey says. “Pete uses neutral pronouns. They and them. Gee? Hey, are you okay? You did know that was a thing, right?”

“Yes,” Gerard says. “Yes, yeah. I mean, I did, like, research. All night. I just… You used them. For Pete. You used them for Pete and it wasn’t a big deal.”

Mikey’s eyes go soft. “Gee.”

“Can you— Can you do that for me, sometimes? Neutral pronouns? Not in front of Ma, not yet, but. Other times.”

“Yeah.” Mikey nods, once, jerky. His glasses slide down his nose again. “Yeah, of course.”

Gerard will not cry. He— they. They will not cry. They just have something in their eye. Also their throat. Also their heart, although that feels like a wave of disgusting, overwhelming affection for their kid brother. Shit. Okay, maybe they’ll cry a little.

“I love you, Mikes,” Gerard says, choked up, and Mikey says, “Yeah,” and leans over, and they hug, a little awkwardly across the kitchen table, Mikey’s weird big hands on Gerard’s shoulders and Gerard’s weird small hands on the nape of Mikey’s neck, and then they both pull away. Gerard swipes a thumb beneath their eyes, sniffs, gets up, and turns on their heel to face the basement door.

“Are you going back to your room to freak out now?” Mikey asks.

“Yep,” says Gerard, popping the P.

"Want company?"

"Nope."

“Fair enough. Try not to do anything stupid, or if you're gonna do something stupid, come get me. Or call Lindsey. Or Frank. Promise? Nod your head, asshole. Okay, good. Night, Gee.”

“Night, Mikey. And, um... thank you.”

Gerard has their back turned to the table, but even without looking, after so many years of siblinghood, they know when Mikey is smiling. “Anytime.”

*

“Lyn-Z,” Gerard says quietly, fingers twisting the hem of their shirt. “Can I kiss you?”

Lindsey looks up, startled. They’re in her bedroom, and Gerard is watching her practice her bass in her temperamental spinning desk chair, which she’s dragged into the center of the room, so Gerard can see better. She’s bent over it like a cut-string marionette, picking out complicated chords she gets right only a third of the time. Gerard and Lindsey often meet up after school, at either household. Sometimes Gerard stays for dinner, or Lindsey crashes on the Way couch. They’ve been doing it since elementary school, but it seems even more important now that, this year, they only have one class together. Gerard is pretty sure Lindsey’s parents think they’re dating.

“I’ve just been thinking about it,” Gerard admits. “Not, like, obsessively! Not in a weird way. Just because I’ve never kissed anyone, and you’re my best friend, and, like, you’re cute, and stuff. And I trust you. Just to say I’ve done it.”

Lindsey smiles, but she shakes her head, and goes back to picking out her chords. “Sorry, babe. You know I only kiss girls right now. House rules.”

Gerard worries their lip, heart pounding. “What if—” they start, and then stop, spine straightening, until the person sitting there is a little different. She says, “Okay, like, what if I am a girl? Sometimes?”

Lindsey's eyebrows arch so high Gerard is afraid they'll merge permanently with her fringe. She sits up, too, seeming to pull sincerity around her like a coat. “Whoa, Gee. Are you?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, nervously touching the bedspread, as if for luck. “Sorta. I think. I’m, like, genderfluid? Or something. With they pronouns. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“No, it’s fine! Wow. I’m just surprised,” Lindsey says, and then, audibly delighted, crooks a finger, and tells them, “In that case, by all means, come here.”

Gerard blushes, and tips forward over the bed, and Lindsey arches up, and they kiss. It’s a nice kiss, despite the awkward angle, just the right side of firm, and Lindsey’s mouth is pretty girl soft, and vaguely cherry-tasting, like she uses chapstick, even though Gerard knows from experience that her fingers and palms are rough and callused from playing bass, so she obviously cares more about her chapped lips than her messed-up hands. It’s a nice kiss, seriously, really nice, but different than Gerard expected, to be kissing someone they’ve known almost their whole life. Lindsey is their best friend, their sister, practically, their soulmate, and they took baths together in elementary school, and this is— okay, this is totally weird.

Lindsey pulls away first. She scrunches up her nose and says, “You’re a good kisser and all, Gee, but, okay, that was totally weird, right?”

“Yes,” says Gerard, relieved. “Totally weird.”

“We’ll never speak of it again. Anyway, I love you,” Lindsey continues, “and I’m completely honored that you told me about the gender thing and I support you one hundred thousand percent on everything always and you’re my best friend until time collapses and I’ll do your makeup for Halloween and prom and stuff. Unless you want to go somewhere cool and get drunk instead. I’ll do your makeup for that, too.”

Gerard just gives her a thumbs up. She goes back to her bass.

*

The more makeup Gerard wears, the better they feel. Until they don’t.

This is around the time the senior from the black lagoon of rampant, aggressive testosterone and homophobia punches them in the face. When Gerard punches the kid back, he swears loudly, in one long, several-syllabled string, seeming mainly to revolve around Gerard’s various body parts and one unspeakably nasty six-letter slur for the magical creature Gerard now knows they are. In return, Gerard unleashes every curse word they’ve ever learned from Lindsey, Mikey, Frank, Bob, and the Internet combined. This takes some time, and draws a crowd.

Gerard throws another punch, connecting clumsily with Bigotedfoot's shoulder as he swerves. "Call me that word again," Gerard snarls, fists flying without direction, pummeling anything they can reach. "Say it again, I fucking dare you, you ten foot tall ignorant shock value jockey piece of shit!"

At this, Privileged Pete knocks Gerard back on their ass on the pavement, to which there are miscellaneous boos, cheers, and confused whooping. Gerard staggers to their feet only to be pushed down again, and kicked in the ribs, which sucks.

"Kick his ass!" someone calls, and Gerard doesn't know who they're talking about but it better not be Gerard because that is not the right pronoun and there is only so much one person can take in a day and, Christ, if Gerard has a limit, this is it.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth, bitch?" says Gerard's mortal enemy from here to the grave, rough through a faceful of blood.

"No, that's incestuous and calls into question all kinds of toxic power dynamics in your household and also that’s not a nice word, I guess we can add raging misogynist to your repertoire," Gerard says, curled up on the concrete, clutching at their stomach, and then they sort of wheeze and choke and have to focus on breathing, which as it turns out is really hard when you're still trying to talk.

"What the hell is going on here?" shouts a voice laced with bureaucracy and burnt teacher’s lounge coffee, and Gerard thinks, shit, fuck, and just for good measure, shit, again.

The crowd scrambles, and Meaty Mike panics. Vice Principal Johnson grabs him by the shirt collar, takes a long, considering look at the scene before him — Gerard, short, chubby, effeminate, on the ground; Meaty, muscled, upright, likely on the football team — and, then, in the special way that only adults in the education system can, he decides they are both equally guilty. This is about the time Gerard's vision goes very swimmy.

"Mr. Beckett," Johnson calls, motioning to Bill Beckett, student administrative assistant and one-man welcome committee, known cross-campus for being relentlessly cheerful and leggy and having two boyfriends. "Please escort Mr. Way—" Gerard winces— "to the nurse's office, as his—" seriously— "injuries seem to require more immediate attention than our Mr. Pedicone."

"Yes, sir," Bill says, and Gerard feels a slim arm hook around their waist. "I got you, come on," he says, not unkindly, and Gerard's always liked Bill, but his hands are fucking cold.

Through the magic of teamwork, Gerard gets to their feet, and then the magic of teamwork is not enough for what feels suspiciously like a bruised rib, and they must instead rely on the magic of Travie McCoy's attractive track team arms, which is awkward, because Travie and Bill are both tall people, and Gerard is not. Together, they hobble to the nurse's office like a six-legged science experiment gone horribly wrong, and once the nurse deems Gerard in no immediate danger from neanderthal-related abrasions, she sends them all to the back room with the ratty couch that last saw sunlight in 1973. The nurse tries to get Gerard's guardian on the phone, which, good luck, she's at work, while Gerard ices, like, pretty much every part of their body and Bill lingers around looking hopeful, probably waiting for more orders. The helpful weirdo.

"Damn," Travie says, voice low, when things have quieted down. "What was that, back there? You mess with Mike Pedicone on purpose?"

"No, man," Gerard says, breathing hard and crustily through the dried blood. "He just came after me. Didn't like my makeup, or something. Most people don't."

"Uncultured sheeple," Travie says, and Gerard makes an aborted little snort of agreement. "You gonna be okay? He roughed you up good, bite size."

"I roughed him up back. He had it coming. I hope he chokes on a really phallic corn dog and dies and his entire queer-fearing genetic line has to tell that story for the rest of time."

Travie grins. It’s like looking into the sun. "You think he'll get suspended?"

"You think I'll get suspended?"

Travie considers this carefully. "Nah," he says, after a moment. "Community service. Probably make you plant a tree or do the morning announcements. You should wash your face. You look like Dracula's drunk uncle."

"Cool," says Gerard.

Donna Way does not think it is cool. She frets and touches their hair and makes them sit on the couch with a bag of frozen peas held to their nose despite the fact that it’s clearly not even broken because Mike Pedicone is all brute force and no finesse. Gerard can’t say the same for themself, because Mikey told Gerard he heard from Pete Wentz who heard from Gabe Saporta that Gerard gave Pedicone a nasty black eye with the single swing they managed to get in. So Gerard is pretty pleased with themself, sitting there, watching Misfits as cold pea juice drips steadily down their cheekbone.

“Hey,” Mikey says, coming out of nowhere over the back of the couch, throwing himself and his ridiculous giraffe legs over Gerard’s lap. He holds out the landline. “Phone for you. What season is this?”

“First one. Finale.” Mikey mouths, Sweet. Gerard takes the phone. “‘Llo?”

“Gee!” Frank shouts. “You’re alive! You are alive, right? I don’t need to find a new best friend? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, man, Bob Bryar may be the greatest thing to ever happen to my pathetic little life but he doesn’t understand shit about the importance of silent horror and it’s cruel and unusual punishment to make me sit through Nosferatu all by my lonesome.”

“I’m alive,” Gerard says, kind of illegibly on account of speaking around thawing peas.

“You sure? You sound like a corpse.”

“No, I’m good. You wanna come over and watch Misfits?”

“Which season?”

“First one. Finale.”

“Ooh, brainwashing cult and untimely impalement. I’ll be there in twenty.”

Mikey leans over and demands, “Bring booze,” into the phone, to which Frank calls out, “Fuckin’ always,” and hangs up.

*

Vice Principal Johnson does, in fact, sentence Gerard to community service. Gerard had worried they'd be forced to play nice with Pedicone, hold hands and skip through a field of flowers and pretend everything is all fine and dandy and the harsh social pyramid of high school where the quirky art kids eat turf at the insistence of the almighty sports scholarship candidates twice a week doesn't exist, but apparently the gods are smiling on the quirky art kids this month, and Pedicone really is suspended.

Gerard is all prepared for trouble, though, so when they're slouched in Johnson's uncomfortable office chair and he says, “I see here that your extracurricular participation is lacking, Mr. Way,” it takes a second for Gerard to respond.

“Uh,” they say, sitting up. “Uh huh?”

Johnson's eagle eyes flick to Gerard's face, then back to the file on the desk in front of him. Gerard wonders what he's got in there. Medical records? GPA? Super secret classified Big Brother-type surveillance reports? Is the school board watching kids sleep? “You're not a team player, Mr. Way. You don't like clubs. You don't go to pep rallies. You don't belong to any after-school activities.”

“No, sir.”

“As far as I know, after the bell, you go straight home. You don't even take the bus. Correct?”

“Yes, sir. I walk with my brother, Mikey.”

Johnson hmms. “Your brother Mikey belongs to a club, doesn't he? Several, in fact.”

Gerard, at a loss, tucks a stray strand of hair behind their ear, and nods. “Um, yearbook and band, I think. I walk him home all the other times. Sorry, sir, but I don't get what this has to do with Pedicone. I thought I was here to talk about my punishment.”

”Yes,” Johnson says, desert dry. “Quite. Fighting another student on school grounds is a serious offense, but, in this case, it is your first offense, so I'm willing to be lenient. Frankly, Mr. Way, I'm concerned about your education here. You seem to find your classes suitably engaging, but your lack of participation is where I worry that you're not adjusting well to the environment. I want to help.”

“Um, no offense, sir, but I'm a senior next year,” Gerard says, tucking their hands under their thighs and squinting at the poster behind the vice principal. It's one of those motivational ones, a stock photo of a sunset with the slogan, The sky’s the limit! ”I appreciate it, but I think it's too late for me to adjust better.”

“Nonsense!” Johnson smiles broadly, like a balding middle-aged Cheshire cat. “It's never too late to give back to your school. I'd like you to join a club, Mr. Way.”

“Mm,” says Gerard. “Mmhm. Can I pick which one?”

“Certainly,” Johnson says, pleased at the cooperation. Smug bastard. He slides a pink pamphlet across the desk. “These are the clubs with openings for bright young men like yourself.”

Gerard sighs, ignores the young man comment with all the willpower they have, and skims the pamphlet. It's not an extensive list. Baking Club, disaster, Chemistry Club, chemical disaster, Creative Writing Club, embarrassing and impossible, Geography Club, Gerard can't find socks that match right in front of their face, let alone an entire country, Drama Club... Huh. Well. If Gerard has to tango, they might as well make a desperate deal with the people least likely to judge the makeup thing.

“Find something?”

Gerard taps a fingernail over Drama and sits back, petulant.

“Perfect,” Johnson booms, still being a smug bastard. “I'll sign you up. You start Tuesday. They're already preparing for this year's play! I've heard through the grapevine it may be Romeo and Juliet.”

Gerard wrinkles their nose. There's nothing worse than a lot of freshmen in frilly pants butchering a British accent. “I change my mind.”

Johnson raises a single eyebrow. “I could always just suspend you instead.”

“Drama Club is good.”

So there Gerard is, on Tuesday afternoon, in the sub-degree basement of their high school, backpack slung over one shoulder, glaring at the door to the drama room, which is basically glorified storage. They've never given much thought to the Drama Club, even though there's a play every year, and it's not terrible, or whatever. People are always saying Gerard has a flair for dramatics, and when they and Mikey were kids the pair of them used to put on shows for Elena in the living room, with costumes and music. Mikey would mime shredding a bass and Gerard would prance around in a pink feather boa pretending to be Joan Jett, which, okay, in retrospect, wasn't very cisgender. Maybe they should’ve seen this trans train thing coming into the station a long time ago. Or coming out of the station, as it were.

Gerard is just mentally patting their pockets for enough enthusiasm to walk in and not immediately seem like an asshole when the door to the drama room swings inward by itself. Through the narrow view afforded by the door, Gerard can make out a few desks, some chairs, a box full of costumes, and a sophomore of unidentifiable gender in a truly horrifying patterned scarf, vest, and paper boy hat combination.

“We were taking bets as to when you were going to come in,” says the sophomore, a bit nastily, with crossed arms. “Or if you'd stand out there all day.”

“I wasn't there that long,” Gerard mutters, shifting their backpack. “This is Drama Club?”

“The one and only.” Questionable Fashion Choices Kid cracks open the door further, expression like, I don't have all day, you know, and Gerard shuffles in.

Once inside, Gerard can see that Got Dressed In The Dark is not the sole member of the Drama Club, as Gerard had momentarily feared. There are three boys sitting at a two-person desk in the middle of the room, and another propped up against an amp, arm slung over one knee, listening to music on his phone, or possibly someone else's phone, or something. A girl with short blue hair and a Ramones crop top is writing something on the blackboard, bouncing back on her heels with every chalk mark.

“You like theater?” asks Bad Hat. Gerard nods jerkily. “Good enough. You’re contractually obligated to be here, so make the most of it. Sit wherever.”

“Fuck, who let Ryan be the welcoming committee?’ one of the boys at the table calls. “That’s your greeting, Ross? We don't even know the guy's name.”

Gerard winces. “Um,” they say, stuffing their hands in their pockets so they don't do something embarrassing, like wave. “I'm Gerard. Hi. I actually... use, um, they/them?”

“Oh,” the same boy says. “Oh, hey, sorry, no problem. Theater kids are cool with gender stuff, you’re lucky you’re here and not in Debate. Hi, Gerard. Welcome to Hissyfit HQ. Sorry about Ryan. He takes his art very seriously. I'm Alex. This is Jon and Spencer. That's Hayley.” Alex gestures to the impish blue-haired girl, who wiggles her fingers. “Vicky’s not here today because she has about a million extracurriculars and knows everyone and is scary, but you’ll meet her next time. Weenie Hut Junior's over there with Spencer's iPod is Brendon.”

“I heard that,” Brendon says, still with headphones in.

“Oh, go back to daydreaming about Aladdin's hot, nippleless body.”

“That's not what I'm doing. I respect Aladdin too much to imagine him naked and he knows it. Stop trying to poison our love.”

“Ignore him,” Alex says to Gerard, who's stifling a surprised laugh. “He's lived a sheltered life. Mormon, poor dear. We're the most fun he has all week.”

“If we could return to the task at hand,” Ryan says testily, tapping his foot on the linoleum. “We have an entire play to organize and only a few months to do it. That means sets, costumes, script, lights, and Johnson breathing down our necks even more than usual this year. Gerard, take a seat, we’ll catch you up.”

Alex motions Gerard over, and Gerard pulls up a chair at the crowded desk, setting their bag down on the floor and bumping elbows with Spencer, who shoots them a small smile. From this position, Gerard can see what Hayley was drawing on the black board when they walked in: a cartoonish chalk pantomime of Ryan screaming, complete with miniature hat and scarf and exaggerated blood vessel popping out of his forehead. Hayley snickers at her handiwork, kicking up her sneakers in delight as she sits down. Alex tips dangerously forward in his chair to high five her.

“We’re waiting for him to snap,” he whispers to Gerard. “It’s gonna happen. He's gonna go all Black Swan on our asses, it'll be amazing.”

“Guys,” Ryan says, staring at the drawing the way a drowning man stares at water. “Guys. You have got to stop doing this. We don’t have time. This doesn’t even look like me.”

“Ouch,” says Hayley. “I thought I did okay.”

“No, he’s right,” Spencer says. “We should actually work. We don’t have time to mess around.”

“We’re doing Romeo and Juliet, right?” Gerard asks. Everyone turns to look at them. “That’s what Johnson said. Are we going with the original, or the classic cop-out modern remix so no one has to actually learn their lines? Steampunk, zombies, greaser, speakeasy, Shakespeare turning over in his grave? What?”

“Finally, someone who knows what they’re talking about,” Ryan says. “The original. Obviously.”

“I was all for the zombies,” Jon says. Spencer snorts, nudging Jon’s shoulder with his, like, Shut up. Jon grins. Spencer blushes. Interesting.

“Yeah, well, we’re not doing that. We’re putting on the real one.”

“I don’t know,” Gerard says. “If it’s done right, an updated perspective could be powerful. I mean, just look at West Side Story. I’m not saying we have to go all out, but Romeo and Juliet is about romance torn apart by prejudice. It’s about hope in the bleakest of landscapes, love from hate, like… a splash of color in black and white, music where there used to be silence. You can say what you want about it, but you have to admit, even now, centuries later, that still resonates. And I don’t know that a lot of bored high schoolers are really going to understand that if we do it exactly like every other play they’ve seen. We have to get their attention.”

Ryan purses his lips. “So what do you suggest?”

Gerard sits back. This— art direction, world-building, web-spinning, obsessive attention to detail, this is what they’re good at. This is what they love to do. “What do all teenagers like?”

“One Direction?”

“Eleven hours of sleep,” Hayley mutters.

“Rebellion,” says Gerard. “Justice. Revolution. We like to see the bad guys in suits and ties and tinted glasses go down in a ring of fire because that’s what they deserve, because they wronged someone, because that’s the world we want to live in, the one where things are fair and the bold kids with makeshift weapons and ripped jeans and dyed hair stick it to the fat cat corporations who try to tell them how to feel. Because that’s the only world we can’t have. Because if the people up on that stage can do it, we can do it, too. That’s what Romeo and Juliet is about. Rebellion. That’s what we have to show them.”

“A desert.”

Gerard twists in their chair. “What?”

Brendon takes one earbud out and winds it nervously around his finger. “A desert,” he repeats. “That’s the bleakest landscape. Trust me, I was born in Vegas. Nothing grows there, especially the people, and there’s plenty of space for a corrupt corporation like you mentioned. We could set it in a desert. The Capulets could be businessmen, and the Montagues could be rogues. Juliet locked away, Romeo roughing it. The masked ball could be a masked work function, the prince a CEO, the friar an inside man...”

“That’s brilliant,” Gerard says, beaming. Brendon turns pink. “What if we did all the Capulets in muted tones, and the Montagues in colors? R and J could gradually move toward opposite costuming over the course of the night.”

“What if it was a musical?”

“Well,” Hayley pipes up. “I think we have a concept. All in favor of turning this year’s production over to Gerard and Brendon, raise your hand.”

Every hand but Ryan’s shoots up.

“Then it’s settled!” Hayley smiles, and holds out a hand to Gerard, which they shake. “Welcome to the Drama Club.”

*

“Gerard, hey!”

Gerard spins. Brendon is running toward them across the quad, fringe flopping. He looks like an over-excited puppy. “Hey, Brendon. D’you need something?”

Brendon jerks his head toward the red brick building they’d both just come out of, slinging his backpack over his shoulder to pull out the iPod he’d had at the beginning of the meeting and eventually put away, the one that was supposed to be Spencer’s. “I just wanted to say, um, thank you, for standing up to Ryan back there. He’s had his pretentious claws in the school play since freshmen year, and we were getting pretty tired of hearing about his creative process and how mauve is better than purple or whatever. You were a Godsend, and I don’t say that lightly, at least not in front of my mother.”

“Uh oh,” Gerard says. “Have I woken the dragon? I’m not going to end up mincemeat in the trunk of someone’s car because I pissed off the resident diva, am I?”

“No, no, don’t worry! He’ll probably just passive-aggressively write songs about you in his bedroom. Speaking of songs and bedrooms,” Brendon continues, passing over the iPod, “I do have ulterior motives. I want you to listen to this track.”

“Right now?”

“Oh, no!” Brendon says, as if he’s afraid he might have offended Gerard. “No, you can take it with you. In fact, please take it with you. I’m actually not allowed to have music at my house. Or electronics. Or joy. Spencer would have a sudden and life-threatening heart issue of a mysterious kind if my parents took it from me for good. Just return it in one piece tomorrow, ‘kay?”

“Deal.” Gerard tucks the iPod into their bag. “Which track?”

Brendon hesitates. “Um. A Whole New World. It’s a cover. By me. I like Aladdin.”

“So I gathered.” Gerard smiles. “You sing? Why doesn’t Ross let you do musical direction? You could totally save the score for the play.”

“Because he’s a bastard,” Brendon says, dreamy. “I’m going to marry him someday.”

Gerard bursts into giggles.

“What!” Brendon squawks, but he’s grinning his golden retriever smile from ear to ear. “It’s going to happen! I’m going to make him fall in love with me! Stop laughing! I’m going to thaw his frosty heart! Gerard! Stop it!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Gerard wheezes, clutching their stomach. “I just— Can you imagine Ryan Ross at a wedding?”

So this is what the long-awaited downfall of Ryan Ross' theater tyranny gets one: a Drama Club to run, an entire musical to adapt, script, rehearse, design, and put on in less than two months, and a viciously delighted Brendon Urie. It’s not how Gerard expected to spend their next-to-last year at Belleville High, but, strangely, they find they don’t have many complaints.

*

Gerard passes the following week in an artist’s haze, only emerging for coffee, cigarettes, and the tiny sliver of irritating sunshine Mikey forces on them by means of literally pushing them out the front door and onto the porch. They hardly notice the school days going by, only that Bob has joined Battle of the Bands, Brendon has swooped past their lunch table to talk about the play at least three times, and the Drama Club has slowly gathered more and more members as word got around about their fresh take on Shakespeare's greatest. It all culminates in the project of a lifetime; Gerard has co-created a masterpiece. This is their baby, their Holy Grail, their Excalibur, their... well, their Romeo and Juliet. It’s perfectly tailored to glide right through Vice Principal Johnson's requirements. Every mention of death has been replaced with dusting or ghosting, every hint of actual political relevance has been cloaked in metaphor, every curse is Firefly-style reworked, every weapon is a laser and not a gun, and if anyone has a problem with the anti-machine message, Gerard is fully prepared to ask, “I'm sorry, are you saying you want your students to be carbon copies who never think for themselves or have any real opinions or passions?” There's no way the school board can turn it down. After all, they were prepared to go ahead with the original, and that version is far more controversial.

The last epiphany comes on Monday night, a day before the Drama Club meets again, this time to finalize the script and start work on auditions. Gerard is bursting with it by the time Ryan calls the meeting to order. They’ve been waiting for this since first track.

“What if the Capulets were faceless?” Gerard blurts. Everyone leans forward. "They all wear masks to protect their identities as heads of the company, Better Living Industries. BLind. They’ll wear the masks throughout the performance, except at the masquerade. Then, they’ll wear their real faces, and the Montagues will wear the masks. That’s why Romeo and Juliet fall in love. Because she’s the first person to see him as he wants to be seen... and he’s the first person to see her as she truly is.”

“We’ve been talking, and we think you should play Romeo, Gerard,” Hayley says from the back of the room. “You know the emotion behind the role better than anyone. You’re perfect for it.”

“Oh,” Gerard says, startled, and then honored, and then hurt. Romeo is the boy’s role. Gerard isn’t a boy.

“We know it’s short notice,” Spencer goes on. “But you’ve been working with Brendon on the music for this long, and he says your voice is killer. Would you want to?”

“All of you decided this?” Gerard asks, swinging right around to honored again. They glance at Ryan, who is crossed-armed and standing by the blackboard. He’s wearing another hideous scarf.

Grudgingly, Ryan nods. “You’re the best choice. Everyone knows it.”

“Wow,” Gerard says. “Wow, okay. Yeah. Thank you, guys, wow.”

“Do we have the rest of the cast list ready?” Ryan asks, and Spencer nods.

“It goes up tomorrow. As for the club itself, Ryan’s in charge of costumes, Hayley is lighting and sound, Brendon is playing Mercutio, or Fun Ghoul, I’m Benvolio the Kobra Kid, Vicky’s our Juliet… Everyone else here is tech or ensemble, agreed?”

A chorus of Agreed’s goes up around the room.

“Now, about the opening number...”

*

Some days, it's easier to be Party Poison than it is to be Gerard.

The mask, the jacket, the enormous sense of righteousness that comes with the job; this carefully cultivated persona, this wicked, black-booted performance that Gerard can hide behind, the idea that, even though there’s no happy ending in sight, God, at least you burn bright. It's easier to strut and wink and ignite rebellion in fictitious masses than it is to admit how lost they often feel, how hopeless and unsure of themself. This is safer than telling the truth, than letting on how hard it is to have no one really know you, to not even know yourself sometimes. Gender, for Gee, is a pendulum, and it feels as though the second they figure out how they want to be addressed, it swings in the opposite direction, and they have to decide all over again. They like being this reworked, remade, color-coded catalyst version of Romeo so much better. Pronouns don't matter so much when you’re raging against the machine, or at least taking direct stage directions. Some days, it's easier to give up. It's easier to be a Killjoy, a Montague, an actor, than it is to be a person.

It even helps with the dysphoria, to be someone else for a while; to shrug on that jacket and call themself a different name, one lacking gender-specific connotations, with nothing but a revolution attached to it. Sometimes, staying silent when everyone insists you’re someone you’re not feels like a revolution all by itself.

*

It's Lindsey who buys Gerard their first pair of girly underwear, just like it was Lindsey who bought Gerard their first eyeliner, their first Game Boy, their first turtle when they were ten, who lasted a week (his name was Chauncey). Gerard likes the symmetry of this, the circular nature of the arrangement. The panties are soft and candy pink and pretty, with white polka dots, wrapped in a pack of three, and even though it's only Target, Gerard lingers in the aisle, just looking, at once terrified and awed at the array of colors, styles, sizes, all the overwhelming options waiting right in front of them. They feel a bit creepy, standing there, but Lindsey is a good cover story. Yes, this is my sister, yes, these are for her, yes, we'd like plastic.

Lindsey squeezes Gerard's hand on the way out, reassuring in the sudden rush and chatter of the Jersey mall crowd. Gerard's nervous butterflies kick the leftovers of the tacos Ma made last night, and just for a second, they think, holy hell, what am I doing, and then it's... actually okay. It's okay. Gerard is now the proud owner of three pairs of pink panties and they’re nice and it's okay.

Gerard wears them to school the next day. No one can see, but Gerard knows they're there.

The idea to try on one of Donna’s skirts comes later, when Gerard is alone. It’s just like that first time, with the lipstick, which is still stuffed in their sock drawer for safe keeping, except this time with purpose. There’s no mistaking what they mean to do here. Gerard picks out a nice one from Ma’s closet, the one she wears to work when she knows her boss will actually show his face, and she wants to look extra smart. It’s a skinny little thing, a sleek grey pencil skirt with two neat black buttons at the hip. Gerard takes it back to their room, not thinking about the size difference until they tug it on, and then they realize it’s much too small, on account of not being built for someone with a big tummy and a dick. Their heart sinks.

“Fuck you,” Gerard says to the mirror, on the verge of tears. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

They scramble for the zipper, unable to spend a single second longer looking at their reflection, this skirt that doesn’t fit, this person Gerard doesn’t want to be, this body that fights back.

Suddenly, the basement door swings open, the creaky top step making its displeasure known. Gerard freezes, fingers still on the zipper of the skirt, caught red-handed as Frank ducks under the banister and into the room. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

“Um,” Gerard says. “Hi.”

Frank tilts his head, almost thoughtful. “Are you wearing a skirt?”

Gerard can feel their heart pounding in their throat, so hard and wild and terrified it hurts. Is this it? Is this the end of a three-year friendship with Frank? Lindsey had warned them about being careful after Bert, she told them— Gerard can’t lose anyone else, not like that, not again. All those midnight movie nights in the Way basement, all the times he’d climbed in through the window, the broken wrist and the Frank-sized superhero Gerard drew on the cast, the phone calls, the shared cigarettes and the macabre jokes and how Frank had held Gerard’s hair back when they were seeing the other side of a raspberry schnapps and the time they went to the beach in the dead of winter because they’re giant idiots and Frank caught a cold and Gerard worried themself sick about his lungs for a full, lonely week… Will that all be gone tomorrow? Gerard can’t bear the thought. It eats away at their heart like acid, a hot flash of panic, of pre-emptive loss. Frank is their best friend. Frank is their best friend. Lindsey is their best friend and Mikey is their best friend but, Jesus Christ, Frank is their best friend.

Somehow, impossibly, through the grace of God, they manage to find their voice. “Um. Yes.”

“Huh.” Frank scratches his cheek and shrugs. “Looks nice. Mikey let me in. I brought your Bio homework, since you skipped yesterday. And vodka. You wanna get shitfaced and play video games?”

“Um,” says Gerard again, shoulders melting. “Fuck yes.”

So there they are, on Gerard’s bed, like always, double-team decimating a group of twelve year olds from Long Island Sound on Halo 3. But Gerard can’t stop thinking about that moment in the skirt, terrifying and real and still far too close for comfort, and they know it’ll bother them until the end of time if they don’t do something about it now, so they hit X.

“Why’d you pause the game, Gee?” Frank shouts. “We were totally kicking ass!”

“I’m genderfluid,” Gerard blurts, and then takes a breath because humans need to breathe and they may have kind of forgotten how to do that, just now, a little bit. “I mean, I’m not always a guy or always a girl or always neither or always both or whatever. It falls under the transgender identity umbrella and I don’t like being called a boy just because I have a dick because I do have a dick but I’m not a boy. I’m trans. I’m not a boy. That’s why I was wearing the skirt and the makeup and shit. I—” They swallow hard. Softer, weaker, they say, “I’m genderfluid.”

Frank blinks. “Ooookay,” he says, slow, drawn-out. Gerard’s heart does an impressive Olympic nosedive into their stomach. “What pronouns do you like?” he prompts, and Gerard lets out a sound that is very, very quiet and very, very relieved.

“Um, I know it’s a change, so. He and him are still fine, and it shifts a lot, but— I like they and them right now? Gender neutral.”

“They and them,” Frank repeats, experimental, moving it around in his mouth like a jawbreaker. “Yeah, I can do that. Thanks for telling me. Was that scary, just then?”

“Like fuck it was.”

“Have a drink,” Frank says kindly, and nudges the bottle of vodka toward Gerard. “You’ve earned it.”

*

The first one appears quietly in the middle of homeroom, the Monday after Gerard comes out to him, neon green and gaudy against the silver of Frank’s thermos. He’s almost asleep when it catches his eye, which is really unfortunate, because he likes World History. It’s the only class where he can rave for twenty minutes about the injustice of the ancient law systems and no one even tries to shut him up. This is partially because none of his classmates are paying attention, but also because Dr. Peggy is pretty great.

The thermos is by his shoe, and he has to squint, but he’s pretty sure the post-it is in Gerard’s handwriting. He does a sort of shuffle-bend and folds it up in his palm so he can read it properly, under his desk.

It says, they/them between us ?, and there’s a little smiley drawn beside it, with vampire teeth and a hat. It kind of looks like the Laughing Man logo from Ghost in the Shell, so it’s definitely from Gerard. He— they. They must’ve gotten carried away, drawing it; Frank can just imagine them bent over the post-it on the bus, knees squeezed together, pen scratching furiously, tongue poking out of their mouth. Mikey was probably in the next seat over, on his phone. He always takes up two seats, with his fucking long legs. He— he?

Oh, now there’s a question. Is it only Gerard, this nonbinary thing? Is Mikey trans, too? He’s always taken after Gerard: less of a mimic, more of a furtive glance, a desire to please, to be appreciated, and Gerard, in turn, anxiously tries to be the brother figure Mikey so desperately craves, even if they’re not a brother at all. Codependent sibling syndrome at its finest. The two of them think no one can figure them out, but all it took Frank was three years of osmosis and a handful of binge-drinking confessionals. If Mikey and Gerard are trans and he never knew, who’s to say anyone is who he thinks they are? What about Ray, Bob, Lindsey? What about him? He’s never really pondered it before. Maybe he should.

Frank’s still tuning out the Enlightenment (full of boring white guys) and contemplating the meaning of the universe (far more diverse than he originally assumed) when the bell for fourth period rings. He stacks his books haphazardly and sprints out, throwing out a last-minute “Thanks!” to Dr. Peggy. He has an ingrained issue with authority stemming from an unhealthy consumption of punk rock at a young age, or so they tell him, but Dr. Peggy is pretty great.

Gerard and Lindsey are already sitting at their usual table in the cafeteria when Frank arrives, heads bent close together, whispering. Lindsey’s hands keep jerking up like she’s — they’re? He’s really going to have to ask — scolding Gerard for something. It wouldn’t be the first time he caught them in the middle of an argument. They do this freaky mind-melding thing, like their eyes are having a totally different conversation from their mouths. Come to think of it, Gerard and Mikey do it, too. Maybe it’s just a Way thing. Lindsey is nearly family, anyway.

“Hey,” Frank says as he sits down, books thunking on the table. Lindsey’s head snaps up, and Gerard turns to him with wide eyes, total deer-in-the-headlights, like they didn’t even see him. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

Lindsey’s eyes slit, but her — okay, he’s just going to refer to everyone neutrally until he knows better — their lip kind of curves, almost a smile, like they’re mad at him but still remember when they were friends, about thirty seconds ago. “Hey, Frank. We need to talk.”

“Linds,” Gerard says, quietly, pleading. “C’mon. Don’t?”

“Yeah,” Frank says, lost, putting his hands up. He hopes they don’t look as red as they suddenly feel. What’s he done now? “Don’t.”

Lindsey blows air out through their nose like an angry bull, ignoring Frank. “I’m just trying to look out for you, Gee. The last thing I want is for you to get hurt, you know that. What if he doesn’t get it?”

“He does,” Gerard insists. “Or he will. I trust him.”

“But what if he doesn’t? What if he’s just another Bert?”

“He’s right here,” Frank puts in helpfully, “and totally hearing everything. If you could let him into your little mother-knows-best deal that would be pretty fuckin’ swell.” They both fall silent. “Or not. Whatever. Can the prisoner speak freely?”

Lindsey shrugs, still under a tiny storm cloud of protective instinct, lightning crackling from the ends of their hair. “The warden will allow it.”

“Cool.” Frank puts his hands down. “Gerard, hey,” he snaps his fingers, and Gerard blinks back to Earth. “Who, y’know— knows what you so graciously shared with me this weekend? Can I talk about it here? Do you mind?”

Gerard beams, and turns back to Lindsey. “See, Linds? He’s already better than Bert.”

Lindsey scowls. It’s going to take a whole lot longer to convince them he’s not a shitbag, Frank can tell.

“Yeah, she knows,” Gerard says, and, okay, if Gerard’s doing it, Frank will go back to she pronouns. “Just keep your voice down. S’all,” they gesture vaguely, “top secret government ops, classified personnel, and shit. Did’ja have a question?”

“Several,” Frank agrees. “First of all, where’s your lunch?”

Gerard frowns, looking at the empty space in front of them. “Huh. I guess I forgot it. I have art third period, you know, so, Mr. Jenkins wanted, like, this whole cityscape, and I thought, hey, I could use charcoal, for a really, like, intense study of depth and perspective and underlying corruption inherent in all capitalistic societies, really eat the rich, with all the shades, you know, and then I added silver and red as highlights for, like, light and rust and the political versus the emotional ramifications of…” They trail off, realizing their audience is decidedly not target. “Um. It just got messy.”

“Right,” Frank says, and shoots Lindsey a Look, one of those Gerard is so married to their artistic process they forget to be human Looks, which you acquire after about an hour in Gerard’s company, as self-defense. Lindsey returns it, which means she’s less mad than Frank thought. That’s good. “Okay, second question?” He pulls the crumpled post-it note from his pocket. “What exactly does ‘between us’ mean? I don’t want to use the right pronouns around the wrong people.”

Gerard chews at their lip. “You can use them when we’re alone. And with Lindsey, obviously. Don't out me without permission, that's the big rule. If you’re talking about me when I’m not in the room, and it’s someone I don’t know, use your judgement? If you think they wouldn’t be an asshole about it, you can use ‘em, but if you’re unsure, play it safe.”

Frank arches an eyebrow. “Complicated, but I can roll with it. I’ll write it on my arm, or something. In code. Top secret government ops.”

Gerard nods. “Classified personnel.”

“And shit, yeah. What about Mikey?”

“Mikey knows,” Gerard says, mouth moving carefully around the sound.

“But?” Frank prompts, but Gerard only shakes their head.

“You’ll have to ask—” and again, so carefully, “—him, yourself. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Wow, we’re compartmentalizing mission info already, got it. You’re Romanov, I’m Captain America, we’re on a need-to-know basis.”

Gerard blushes happily. “You really think I could be the Black Widow?”

“Yes,” Frank says, and pops the lid on his salad container. Discussions of gender identity make him peckish. “Lindsey can be Fury, because she’s scary.”

“Lindsey can kick your ass for that,” says Lindsey. “Lindsey is Hawkeye.”

“Who’s Hawkeye?” asks Ray as he sits down, Bob following suit behind him, and Gerard cheerfully fills them both in. By the time the bell for sixth period sounds, they’ve all been assigned various superheroes through loud, fervent arguing, and Bob silently pulling up the Marvel database on his phone in order to understand what the fuck they’re all on about (“You’re the Hulk! Bob, listen, I’m telling you, man, you’re the Hulk!”). Gerard claims the unlawful devouring of all of Frank’s potato chips was equally crucial to the creative process. Frank is not in agreement.

The second post-it note appears, two days later, buried in the pocket of Frank’s jacket. The half-illegible scrawl says, ze/zir ?? they/them is still cool tho. He’s beginning to wonder if Gerard has his locker combination, and, also, why ze doesn’t just text him this shit. Mortals cannot possibly comprehend Gerards; the species works in strange and mysterious ways.

The third post-it note floats gently to the ground when he opens his textbook in the middle of Biology, sticking to the toe of his shoe and reading, dhe/dheu ? Below it is a tiny pencil sketch of a headstone and a grimly accurate human skull, possibly eyed from the teaching skeleton in the corner of the room, whom Mikey had dubbed Sherlock Bones at the beginning of the year. It’s adorable, how Gee keeps leaving these for him, and useful, but they have really got to talk about this privacy thing.

Frank leans over, taps Gerard on the arm, and slides the post-it note over. He’s done research since the initial pronoun conversation at lunch last week, but he hasn’t come across anything like this, and he’s not quite sure what to do with them. “Never seen these before,” he whispers. “What d’they mean?

“Death pronouns,” Gerard mumbles, blushing. “From the Latin root. I made them up.”

Frank smiles. “They suit you.”

Gerard turns ever-pinker. That suits dheu, too.

*

Gerard keeps leaving post-it notes, and Frank keeps keeping them. He stuffs them in the pockets of his pants, his coat, peeking out from the waistband of his jeans, until he’s carrying around a small mountain of bright stationary between the folds of his clothes. Gerard doesn’t see the use in hanging onto the lot, but it’s sweet. They like that Frank does it. Gerard likes most things that Frank does, really. Gerard likes Frank's laugh and his guitar and the endearing way he tucks his hair behind his ears and swears like a sailor and refuses to eat things that might have once had a face and loves bad B-movie horror films probably more than his own mother and allows Gerard to Sharpie fake tattoos onto his arms in Bio and how he always has a lighter even when he doesn’t have a cigarette. Gerard likes Frank's fierce loyalty and Frank's extremely founded and rational authority issues and Frank's temper and Frank's ability to walk into a room and pinpoint exactly where your parents have hidden the mixed drinks. Gerard likes Frank's twisted sense of humor and Frank's hands and Frank's dreams and Frank’s mouth and Frank's eyes and the way Frank says their name. Gerard kind of really, really likes Frank. This is a fact of life. The sky is blue.

Gerard wonders what they’ll do about it.

Evidently, it’s host a Halloween party for his birthday in the hopes of winning his attention. It’s not like they don’t already have it, being one of Frank’s closest friends, but that’s not exactly what they’re angling for, this time. Belleville High’s musical is a month away, but the production rush in the auditorium has calmed down enough that, for the first time in what feels like forever, Gerard finally has a moment to breathe. They honestly hadn’t expected to love their time in the Drama Club so fiercely, or to be so proud of what their team has accomplished. They’re even warming up to Ryan, with his type-A control issues and his elaborate, affected poetry slams at the local coffee house every other Wednesday night.

But Gerard sets that all aside the weekend before Hallow’s Eve, because Frank is turning eighteen, the last of the group to join the ranks of adulthood, and he deserves the birthday bash of a lifetime. They enlist Lindsey, who is amazingly coordinated and perfect at everything, and Ray and Bob, who are Mature and Responsible and Good For Heavy Lifting. Bob also supplies the alcohol, because his scary face can get him in anywhere; he has a secret, grudging heart of gold, but the cashier at the corner store doesn’t need to know that. Mikey even calls Pete Wentz, who calls Gabe Saporta, who calls Travie and William and Vicky, who know everyone, and somehow they all manage to convince Donna Way that it’s a good idea to visit her friend in NYC for the weekend and leave a clusterfuck of excitable teenagers to their own devices in her house for Halloween. To this day, Gerard is not entirely convinced they didn’t drug her, or something, because, whoa, seriously. Mad props.

By the time the sun goes down, the Way residence is full of kids in costumes. Gerard’s borrowed their Ma’s pencil skirt again, strategically clipped into place with safety pins to allow for the size that bothered them so much the first time, and a lacy blouse Lindsey snuck them, complete with the lipstick that began it all and eye makeup that could kill. They’re even wearing heels. It’s the first time they’ve been brave enough to dress exactly the way they want, and they look incredible. They just hope everyone else thinks so, too.

Ray comes dressed as a clown, hair tricked out rainbow in wash-away chalk, sending Mikey into uncharacteristic hysterics, which makes Ray blush and stammer and get him a glass of water because as it turns out he is magically already drunk less than half an hour into the festivities, as only Mikey can be. Travis, William, and Gabe are the twins from The Shining plus one, Pete is something no one’s ever heard of, Patrick is, apparently, “Pete’s guilty conscience,” and Bob is that one asshole who shows up in the t-shirt that says, This is my costume, but it's okay because he's scary enough on his own. Lindsey comes in a suit and tie with a plastic axe pinned to her back, the dead husband to Gerard’s murderous housewife, just like they planned. It’s a huge hit, and everyone goes around touching the axe with their fingertips, like it’s sacred, while Lindsey grins and soaks up the attention. Even Brendon arrives at some point, with Spencer and Jon in tow. He’s also wearing a tie over a white dress shirt, like Lindsey, but he has a name tag that says, Elder Urie. He makes an immediate beeline for Gerard, who’s passing out water and candy from the counter of the kitchen, hoping to keep everyone properly hydrated and not in any danger.

“Hey, Gerard!” Brendon says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You look super awesome, whoa.”

“Thanks,” Gerard says, grinning. “Did you see Lindsey? We’re a tag team. I may be pretty, but looks can kill. You’re a missionary, right?”

Brendon grins back. “Yes, ma’am. The scariest thing I could think of was my inevitably bleak caffeine-and-gay porn-less future.”

“Where do your parents think you are?”

“With Spencer. Which I am. So it’s not a lie and I can’t go to hell for it. They love him,” Brendon says, eyes glinting with obvious glee at having fooled them. “They think he’s a good straight Christian boy. Little do they know he’s my pop culture dealer and totally head over heels for Jon. Don’t tell him I said that. He’s still trying to pretend they’re friends.”

Gerard thinks of Frank.

“Where’s the guest of honor, anyway?” Brendon asks, as if on cue, leaning across the counter for one of the red plastic cups full of various drinks. Gerard slaps his hand away.

“I haven’t seen him yet, and get your sticky underage fingers away from that. You’re not allowed to have any. I’ll tell Spencer.”

Brendon pouts. “You play dirty, Way. Everyone here is underage! You’re underage.”

“Yes,” Gerard says, “but you’re fifteen. You’re a baby. And I’m holding the bottle, in my own house, which means I’m in charge.”

Brendon lets out a heavy, dramatic sigh and presses his cheek to the counter, like a swooning countess in a Victorian romance novel. “You’re a real catch. Frank’s lucky. Maybe I’ll steal you away from him. I’m not getting anywhere with Ryan, he’s a total ice queen, even in the face of my devastating doe eyes. What kind of underwear are you wearing?”

Gerard laughs, shocked. “Me and Frank aren’t like that. Yet.”

“Ooh.” Brendon flaps his hands, hitting his tie in the process. “Dish!” he orders. “I love gossip.”

Gerard shrugs. “It’s a four step plan.”

“Throw him a party, look totally hot around him, get him drunk, confess your feelings?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay, okay, but, seriously,” Brendon says, elbows on the counter. “About the underwear—”

“Brendon.”

“No, really! I’m interested. Not in a creepy way, but, like, I’ve been thinking about gender, and you seem like the person to see.”

“Oh!” Gerard says. “Oh, yeah, fuck! I am. I’d be happy to! What kind of stuff are we talking, here? Like, you know I’m trans, right? Do you think you might be, too?”

Brendon shrugs, turning slightly pink. “Maybe? I don’t think I’m a girl, really, not like you, but a while ago I kind of... um, stole some of my sister’s underwear? And it was... nice.” He lowers his voice, leaning in, like he’s sharing a secret. “They’re so comfortable.”

Gerard grins. “I know.”

“But does that make me— y’know, feminine? I don’t feel any different.”

“Not necessarily. There are tons of ways to express your gender identity, and not all of them have to mean you’re transgender, just that maybe you’re more fluid than you thought. And being transgender doesn’t have to mean you’re a girl or a boy. There are a million genders out there. Like mine, you know? Have you heard of nonbinary identities at all?”

“Oh, boy,” Ray says, passing by, evidently having heard the last of the speech. “Now you’ve got them started. You’re gonna be here all night.” He raises his eyebrows amicably, grabs a drink, and hisses, “Run while you still can, Brendon,” before slipping off again. Gerard sticks their tongue out at his retreating back.

They do, in fact, talk about gender for most of the night, now and then with interruptions from various partygoers looking for a drink or a dance or a word with the host, but Brendon doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest; in fact, he’s a more than captive audience, and Gerard finally extracts themself from the conversation feeling a lot better about the youths of the world than they did a few hours ago.

“Hey,” Lindsey says, quick, touching Gerard’s arm as she passes them on their way to the living room. “You should go find Frank. He’s brooding, and it’s his birthday, Gee, he shouldn’t be brooding. Go cheer him up with your fantastic tits.”

Gerard flushes with equal pride and embarrassment, but nods. They wonder what’s up with Frank. Is he not having a good time? Shit. That’s not allowed. “Thanks. You should go find Kitty, or Hayley. They’ve both been eyeing you.”

Lindsey holds her fingers up to her tongue in a V and winks. “Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll take both. Go get your man.” She gives Gerard a kind shove into the crowd, hopefully in the direction of Frank, and disappears. Gerard stumbles slightly in their high heels.

It’s like a scene from an indie high school movie; the mass of teenaged bodies parts for one crystal clear second, and Gerard catches Frank’s eye across the room. He’s leant against the wall, with a red cup in one hand, dressed in tight black pants and a tighter black shirt, fake blood all down his front and plastic vampire teeth peeking from his mouth. He waves. His arms look great.

Gerard pushes their way over to him, sliding right up next to him against the wall. “Hey, stranger,” they say breathlessly.

“Hey,” Frank says, eyes traveling from Gerard’s bare calves up to their face, slow and calculating, “stranger. What’s shakin’?”

Gerard, pleased at the attention Frank is obviously and completely according-to-plan paying to their costume, knocks their shoulder against his and smiles. “Nothing much. You want to get out of here? I’ll go steal a bottle of spiced rum just for you and we can sit on the lawn. The stars look better when you’re smashed.”

Frank looks down at his drink. His eyelashes are long and dark against his cheeks. “I thought you were busy talking to Brendon,” he says, a little nastily, but it only makes Gerard love him more, because he’s totally jealous and terrible at hiding it.

“I have all the time in the world for you, birthday boy,” Gerard says, pushing off the wall. They hold out a hand. “Come on, wallflower. Let’s go be more cultured and cool than everyone else in the room by ourselves, like assholes.”

Frank cracks a smile, and takes Gerard’s hand. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and Gerard pulls him toward the kitchen, where they grab a bottle from the liquor cabinet and take it outside, giggling like they’re getting away with something, even though no one will notice they’re gone. They climb over the fence and up the hill to the woods that box in one side of the Way property. Gerard had intended to lay on the grass, but then they’re worried about ruining their Ma’s skirt, so instead they perch on the low brick wall that blocks off the forest.

“You were right,” Frank whispers after a long while and half the bottle of rum. “The stars do look better when you’re smashed.”

Gerard smiles into the dark. “Happy Halloween, Frankie,” they say.

Frank’s shoulders shift up slightly, a quiet huff, and he raises his glass to the sky before tipping the rest of it back. “Happy Halloween, Gee.”

“Happy birthday, Frankie.”

“Happy not-birthday, Gee.”

“You’re eighteen.”

“I’m eighteen.” Frank turns, and he’s closer than Gerard expected, only a breath away, and in the moonlight, his skin glows pale and ghostly and cool. The fake blood still staining his chin, despite the best efforts of his red solo cup, only makes it cooler. Gerard wants to touch him, suddenly, wants to tug his tie out of its hastily-done knot and drag him forward and rough him up, but they don’t. They can’t. “Hey, fuck, I’m eighteen. Same as you. That’s so weird. I remember when we were fifteen. Was that really three years ago?”

“Yes,” says Gerard. “And you were just as much of a devious little shit then as you are now.”

“I was not!” Frank laughs for real this time, a sharp, sudden bark. “I like to think I’ve grown as a person. I’m far more of a devious little shit now than I ever was at fifteen. I still get you into trouble, sure, but at least I’m a lot better at getting you out of it again.”

“I still say your espionage skills could use some work.”

Frank smiles, his eyes going all soft and crinkled at the corners, the way Gerard loves. “I don’t know. I keep your secrets pretty well, I think. By the way,” he says, reaching out a hand to smooth the filmy fabric of Gerard’s blouse. “I like your costume.”

Gerard’s breath hitches. Frank’s hand is very warm, and on Gerard’s chest, and even though it’s only for a second, it feels decidedly like a Moment, charged and electric. “Thanks,” they say, hoarse. “You don’t think it’s too much?”

“No, it’s perfect. It’s… really, really perfect. You look perfect.” Frank hesitates. “Beautiful, even.”

“Really?”

“You’re beautiful, Gee,” Frank murmurs, reaching forward again, this time to brush the edge of his thumb across Gerard’s cheek, and then, just as he seems to be gathering the courage to speak again, something flashes behind his head. Gerard jerks back, startled, and Frank’s face falls, but he cranes his neck to look round, and there, in the darkness, a streak of white light makes its last journey across the silver sky.

“Frankie,” Gerard says, wonderstruck. “That’s a shooting star. A shooting star just for you, on Halloween, your birthday. Make a wish.”

Frank takes a deep breath and says, "I'm a little bit tipsy right now, so keep that in mind in case I'm about to royally fuck up, but I think you're the most amazing person I've ever met and I really like you a lot and I’ve never seen a shooting star before so that’s probably a sign from the cosmic powers or whatever that I should follow my bisexual dreams and also it’s my birthday so I’m going for it,” and then he leans over and kisses Gerard on the mouth.

Gerard makes a surprised squeaking noise, thinks, Wait, what, thinks oh God oh God oh God he’s kissing me, thinks, Finally, and fists their fingers firmly in the fabric of Frank's dress shirt to pull the pair of them chest-to-chest. Frank tastes like alcohol and waxy makeup and chocolate. He grins against Gerard’s lips and Gerard licks his teeth by accident and Frank grins more and they almost tip over the edge of the wall, except they don't, because they're magic. Frank gets a hand on Gerard's waist for balance, warm and steadying, and Gerard tugs on Frank's hair a little bit, which Frank seems into. The kiss is open-mouthed and wonderful and exactly what Gerard wanted and basically the best thing to happen to the universe since the invention of the wheel.

They kiss for a long minute, and then pull away, both delighted and mortified. Frank keeps his hand on Gerard's waist. He has a smear of bright red lipstick across the left side of his mouth, which makes him look like even more of a vampire.

"What did you wish for?" Gerard asks breathlessly.

Frank shakes his head. "If I tell you, it doesn't count."

"I've never kissed a boy before," Gerard admits.

"I've never kissed a Gerard before."

"D'you fancy doing it again, maybe? Like right now?"

"Well," says Frank. "If you insist."

He leans over again, and Gerard surges up to meet him. This time involves less fumbling, but it's just as good, just as sure and head-spinning and sweet. Gerard hopes the fake blood all down Frank's shirt won't rub off on their own shirt, and then they hope it will. Frank pulls away again, and Gerard drags him back, and they trade off like that for a while longer, until clouds pass over the moon and they can't see for shit.

“What did you wish for?” Gerard asks again, as they walk back up to the Way house and to the party.

Frank squeezes their hand. “You.”

*

“So is Frank your boyfriend now?” Mikey asks the next morning. He and Gerard are watching Sunday cartoons on the couch, crossed-legged and in their pajamas. There are still stray candy wrappers stuffed between the cushions, just out of reach of nimble fingers, and a red plastic drink cup sits abandoned and forlorn on the coffee table. Party carnage is difficult to get rid of entirely, and the Way cleaning arsenal is comprised of one asthmatic vacuum and a busted Swiffer, so it’ll probably stick around for another week. “I saw you holding hands last night, and he totally had lipstick on his collar. You guys were outside for a long time.”

Gerard shrugs. “Yeah. I don't know. I hope so. We haven’t talked about it.”

“Did he kiss you?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you he likes you?”

“Yes.”

“Did he do that goofy smile thing he does?”

Gerard rests their chin in their hand and does their very own goofy smile thing. “Yes.”

Mikey rolls his eyes. “Then you're as good as married. It's Frank. He's wanted to have your weird neurotic science babies since freshmen year. That's why he came bounding up to you at orientation like a lost puppy. It was love at first, ‘Hi, I'm Frank, you look antisocial and lonely, be my friend.’”

“I did not look antisocial and lonely. You weren't even there.”

“You totally did. You were probably sitting all by yourself, you big loser. Were you drawing? Were you drawing zombies eating Vice Principal Johnson?”

“Get out,” Gerard says grumpily, pointing in the general direction of the next room.

Mikey cackles. “You were, weren't you?”

“Get out.”

Mikey says, “It's the living room. It's a free country. You don't own me!” but he plants a wet, sloppy kiss on Gerard's cheek and leaps from his seat anyway. “Let me know how Scooby gets out of this one. I bet the professor did it.”

Gerard knows better than anyone that labeling something doesn’t necessarily make it any more real— hell, they’re still figuring out how they want to be addressed— but they’d like to be able to introduce Frank as something other than a friend, so they call him up.

“Are you my boyfriend?” they ask, before he’s even said hello.

“What?” Frank says. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Gerard says, throwing themself dramatically onto their stomach across the edge of their bed. “Are you my boyfriend? I mean, are we a thing? A dating thing?”

“Do you want to be a dating thing?”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” Frank says immediately.

“Really?”

“Yes!” Frank says, louder, and kind of incredulous. “I’ve liked you forever, Gee, what the hell. Even Lindsey knew. She totally threatened me, before we were even really friends, like, back in freshmen year. ‘Break their heart and I’ll break your dick,’ and everything, you know. I was like, ‘Deal,’ because I wouldn’t, and now we’re cool, but, man, she was scary. You didn’t know about this? I am assuming from your silence that you didn’t know about this. Are you really that oblivious?”

“Yes,” Gerard says.

“Of course you are,” Frank says fondly. “Yes, I’m your boyfriend. I want to be your boyfriend. If you’ll have me.”

“Idiot,” Gerard says, just as fondly.

“Is that a yes? It’s so hard to tell. What does that make you? Are you, like... Is there a gender neutral term? What do you want to be called?”

Gerard chews at their lip. They’ve thought about this. “I think I want to be your girlfriend. Maybe. There’s, like, feyfriend? Or datefriend? But. I’m good with girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend it is,” Frank says. “Is that all? My mom’s breathing down my neck about my English assignments, you know how she gets.”

“Yeah, that’s all,” Gerard says. “Oh, but by the way I’m glad Lindsey didn’t break your dick because I bet it’s great, okay, bye!”

Gerard has just enough time to pull the phone away from their ear and hit End Call before Frank can get much further than shouting, “Wait, come back, tell me more about my dick!”

*

The first time Gerard asks Frank to use she pronouns is the morning of a Bio test, the same one she was trying to take the day she was hit by Mike Pedicone, the day she finally admitted to herself that she was someone new, except this time at the end of the term, to show progress. It counts for five percent of their final grade, but it means sitting in a silent, dark lab for an hour and a half, answering questions they didn’t study for and won’t remember tomorrow. Frank knows she’s been preoccupied with the musical so close now, on top of regular grade stress, the pendulum of her gender identity, and their new relationship. This year has been a busy one, and he hates to see her so worked up about something so insignificant, in the grand scheme of the universe.

She meets him outside before first track, looking like hell in heels, if she had the guts enough to actually wear heels in front of the transphobic shitheads they call their classmates. Her eye makeup is heavy and dark. She’s smoking a cigarette, or trying to, but her fingers are shaking. She puts it out where she sees him, grinds it beneath her heel and waits for him to huff and puff his way up the stairs.

“Hi,” Frank says, taking her hand.

“Hi,” she says. She sounds like she’s been crying. “I didn’t want to go in yet.”

“It’ll be fine,” Frank says gently. Gerard had texted him about pronouns this morning, as he was inhaling his breakfast, this time too urgent for the system of post-it notes Frank has come to love. He keeps all of them. They’re wedged between the pages of The History Of Monster Movies that Gerard bought him for his birthday, collecting dust, waiting to be put to some purpose again. “It’s just one test, and then it’ll be over. It’s only for progress. You get credit just for completing it, Mumbai said so.”

“It’s not just that,” Gerard sighs. “It’s everything, you know? Fucking everything.” She rests her forehead on Frank’s shoulder, even though she has to hunch over a little to do it. Frank wraps his arms around her. “It’s hard, Frankie. I hate it sometimes. I hate myself sometimes.”

“It’ll be fine,” Frank repeats. He knows she doesn’t mean the test anymore.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Gerard asks, almost a whine, muffled by where her face is pressed to Frank’s shoulder. “You should have a real girlfriend, not an imitation.”

“Hey, fuck, don’t say that.” Frank frowns. “You’re real. You’re more of a woman than anyone else I could find, okay? Anyway, I think it’s amazing, how you’re so confident. You don’t take shit from anyone. You know who you are. I admire that.”

“Yeah?” Gerard sniffs.

“Fuck yeah.”

Gerard nods. “Okay. Yeah. Good. I kind of love you, Frankie. I want you to be happy.”

“I am,” Frank says. “You make me happy. I kind of love you, too. You ready to go in and slay that Bio test like fuckin’ Buffy?”

“Yes,” Gerard says, standing up straight and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “But Faith was hotter.”

*

Gerard is still thinking about the moment outside long after they’ve stopped thinking about the Biology test. They’re sure they got a passing grade, if nothing else, but telling Frank they loved him, having it feel so casual and easy and right after years of wondering if anyone outside of their family could feel that way about them, if they were desirable at all, and having Frank say it back just as simply, just as easily— that weighs on their mind, tucked into a safe corner, to be pulled out for special occasions, when Gerard feels most alone, and breathed into life like a flame.

They think about it all day, and then they invite him over after school. He’s almost always at the Way house, anyhow, whether he uses the front door or the window in Gerard’s room, a familiar face free to come and go as he pleases, just like Lindsey. Donna is hardly ever surprised to see him, although if he emerges from the basement in the mornings without her having noticed him arrive, she usually makes him ring his mother before she’ll allow him breakfast. But she’s not there this time, and won’t be home for a while, still hung up at the salon, and it’s Thursday, which means Mikey is at Band practice, so they have the house to themselves for the rest of the afternoon. They head down to Gerard’s room immediately, dropping their bags heavy with books at the foot of the stairs and their jackets on the floor, because fuck it. Gerard will clean later. Maybe.

Gerard settles on the bed first, not really trying to be sexy or anything but just kind of getting comfortable, and then they crook a finger and go, “C’mere,” all soft and nervous but just wanting Frank, wanting him so purely and with everything they have, just for who he is and how he moves and the way his eyes light up when he smiles.

Frank raises an eyebrow, catching on, and sits facing Gerard on the bed, and when Gerard kisses him, he just melts, relaxing into it completely. He’s a different person when they’re together, gentler, less afraid to let his guard down. It’s clear how much he trusts Gerard, and Gerard loves that they can take Frank apart like this, pull out the stitches of his bravado one by one until he nearly begs.

They kiss for a long time, figuring it out as they go along, and then Gerard tries something they’ve wanted to try for months; they curl their fingers into the dark strands of Frank's hair and pull, careful but definite, sure. Frank makes a sound, a good sound, a sound Gerard has never before heard a real person make and can only qualify as cosmically pleased, or, possibly, devastating.

"Jesus Christ," Frank says, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. His Adam's apple bobs dangerously in his throat.

"Just Gerard is fine," Gerard replies, and tugs again, harder.

"That," Frank says, tipping his head forward to say it open-mouthed and breathless against Gerard's shoulder. "That is so... Do that more."

Gerard tugs again. Frank presses a messy kiss just under their jaw, almost reverent, like a thank you. Gerard keeps pulling, sharp little yanks that make Frank gasp, and Frank keeps leaving a carnage of slow, deliberate kisses, further and further down Gerard's body, through their shirt and across their arms and on the softest, squishiest parts of their noticeable belly, and then he has his hands on the buckle of Gerard's belt. The lacy edge of Gerard's pink underwear waves a sheepish hello.

“Is this okay?” Frank murmurs, face nearly level with Gerard's dick. “Can I take them off?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, smoothing their fingers through Frank's hair, fixing the mess they'd been making of it. “Yeah, come on, Frankie. Come on.”

Frank unbuckles Gerard's jeans and drags them down their thighs, pressing his nose to the bulge in Gerard's panties, inhaling deep, like a druggie with his fix. It's weird, but Gerard likes it. Gerard would probably like anything Frank did. Except...

“Wait,” Gerard says, quiet and hoarse.

Frank pulls his hands away. “Too much? We can stop.”

“No, I want you to. A lot. I’ve thought about it. Only...” Gerard hesitates. They didn’t really plan this part. “It may not be as easy to think of me as... a girl, or whatever, when you're looking at my dick. That’s all.”

Frank's expression doesn't change, but one corner of his mouth twitches. “You're a girl, or whatever, no matter where I'm looking. I know that. You know that. The whole state of New Jersey knows that. You're great, Gee. You're my girlfriend. And I bet your dick is awesome, and magic. I bet I'm gonna love your dick, in a minute.”

Gerard grins, but soon their face falls again. “I just... I want to feel like myself, Frankie, you know? Like... comfortable. And pretty.”

“You are pretty,” Frank says softly. His thumb rubs slow, comforting circles across Gerard's hipbone, just above the waistband of their panties. “You're so pretty, sweetheart. Let me show you how pretty you are. Can I?”

The way Frank says sweetheart makes Gerard feel good. They nod, and Frank drags their panties off, just like the jeans. He murmurs, “Tell me if you change your mind,” and swallows Gerard down in one smooth, graceful motion. Gerard’s fingers jerk involuntarily back to Frank’s hair, pulling him further down onto Gerard’s cock, choking him with it. Frank hums his encouragement, reaching down with his free hand to rub himself through his jeans. His head bobs, obscene, the pink tip of Gerard’s dick slipping out of his mouth every few minutes when he stops for breath.

“Frankie,” Gerard gasps, overwhelmed, torn between squeezing their eyes shut and needing to witness every moment of Frank sucking cock like a champion. “Frankie, fuck. You’re amazing. Are you touching yourself?”

Frank nods.

“Can I see?”

Frank closes his eyes and nods again, pulling off with a wet sound. He inhales shakily and sits back on his haunches, so that Gerard has a perfect view of him shoving his hand down his jeans, up to the wrist. He jerks off rough and fast, coming all over his palm only a few minutes later, mouth slack. Gerard is slower, savoring it, working themself to oversensitivity in lazy, languid strokes while Frank breathes hard at the other end of the bed.

“Holy shit,” Frank says when they’ve both finished. They don’t rush to dress again, knowing they have the house to themselves for at least another two hours. “I’m gonna die. I’m dying, Gee. You killed me. You and your magic dick.”

“Mm,” Gerard says, fucked out and heavy-limbed. “So that was sex.”

“That was sex.”

“I understand the appeal now. Have you done that before? Sucked someone off? You’re really good at it.”

Frank shrugs. “A few times. I love it.”

“I can tell.”

“You’re my first girl, you know.”

“Yeah?” Gerard says softly, smiling, shifting their arms behind their head, and their legs in Frank’s lap. “I like that. Being yours.”

“Me too,” Frank says, smiling back. His hair is plastered to his forehead. After a minute, he says, quietly, “Hey, Gee? You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to talk about it, but... it’s been eating away at me. You know a couple months ago, when you first came out to me, and Lindsey said she didn’t want me to be another Bert? Who’s Bert?”

Gerard sits up. “Oh. Um.”

“I didn't mean to break the mood. You don’t have to answer,” Frank says again.

“No, it’s okay,” Gerard says, even though it’s not. “Um, Bert was my friend. I mean, I guess. I had feelings for him? I don’t know. It could have gone somewhere, in time, I think, but it didn’t. He kind of, um, broke my heart. Hard.”

“When was this?” Frank wiggles a tentative pinky, not sure if he's allowed to hold Gerard’s hand, and Gerard hooks their finger around it. “I never heard about it.”

“It was a couple months before I told you, right after I figured it out, myself. I wasn’t ready to really talk about it yet, so I found groups online, with other queer teens, somewhere I could be honest without worrying about it. I met him, and we exchanged emails and texts for a while, Skype calls and stuff. He was a good friend, and trans, too, so he got it, or... I thought he got it.” Gerard sighed. “His parents, um, pretty much brainwashed him, when they found out. They weren’t too happy with the idea of having a son instead of a daughter, so. They messed him up, and he stopped talking to me. Called me some nasty fucking things, at the end there. Said, um, what was it— that I was lying to myself, and someday I’d grow out of it and settle down with a nice girl. That I just needed help, and then I’d be normal.”

“Shit,” Frank says, squeezing Gerard’s hand. “Shit, Gee. I’m sorry. ‘That sucks’ doesn’t even cover it.”

Gerard shrugs. “Yeah, well. It hurt, but it was a while ago. I have you, and Lindsey and Mikey and everyone, and you’ve all been amazing. It’s not a big deal. I’ve heard worse. It doesn't change who I am. I just wish I could’ve done something, you know? To help him. He’s obviously not safe where he is.”

“Have you heard from him since?”

Gerard shakes their head. “I sent him a few more texts, after. I was so angry, at first, so a couple were drunk and probably a little vicious, I’ll admit, but now I just feel sad for him, really. He was a good kid.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. “Yeah.” He hesitates. “I’m glad you have people who care about you. People who love you. You really deserve that.”

Gerard smiles weakly. “Yeah. I’m lucky.”

“You wanna feel lucky talking about something more cheerful?”

Gerard’s smile twists, a little brighter, more genuine. “Actually, I want to feel lucky doing more of that thing we just did where talking is kind of situationally difficult.”

“Ah,” Frank says, eyebrows arching. “Might be a bit of a problem, there, Casanova. I need, like, five minutes.”

“You have three,” Gerard says, and drags Frank into their lap again.

*

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, or, Romeo and Juliet as Presented by the Belleville High School Theater Crew, opens with a brightly-lit waiting room, surrounded by perfect, sterile walls, and a voice — Steve Montano, a senior Bob knows — reciting the famous first lines of Shakespeare’s greatest work, although this time with a twist. Or it will open that way, at some point tonight. Right now, Gerard is sketching at their desk, recreating the endless costume pieces from memory, with their respective people in them, as gifts for all the cast members. They’ve all worked so hard on the show, set design and music especially, and Gerard can only hope everything goes off without a hitch. They’re nervous, of course; nervous to be on stage, nervous to share something they created — or recreated — with the rest of the world, nervous they’ll forget their lines or trip or scramble a high note. But even if something goes wrong, they’re immensely proud of what they’ve accomplished and the unlikely friendships they’ve knit, especially considering they hadn’t even wanted to join the Drama Club in the first place.

“Hey, Ma wants to know if you’ve eaten yet,” Mikey says, coming down the basement stairs to startle Gerard from their thoughts.

“Not yet. I’ll go up in a minute. You’re coming to the play tonight, right?” Gerard turns in their chair, momentarily tearing themself away from their charcoal and colored pencils to give Mikey their full attention.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Mikey assures them. “Seven o’clock, right? Oh, and is it okay if Pete comes over before the show? They’re helping Travie with tech tonight and wanted to head over together.”

“Mmhm,” Gerard says, hunching over their sketchbook again, distracted. “Leave your door open.”

Mikey crosses his arms, leaning his hip against the side of Gerard's desk not covered in costume sketches. “Seriously? You and Frank don't have to leave your door open.”

“Me and Frank are nearly legal adults. You're not, and Pete is older than you. Plus, they punched Gabe Saporta in the face once. You have scrawny chicken arms. I like Pete fine, but I don't want them pressuring you into anything you’re not ready for.”

“Oh, please,” Mikey says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “There's no pressuring, Gee, get off your soapbox. I know when I’m ready and when I’m not. I can take care of myself! I can make my own decisions. For example, I'm deciding to steal all your X-Force comics and never give them back, so ha, fuck you!” Then he darts over to the bookshelf, shoves a stack of X-Force issues into his arms, and runs off before Gerard can stop him, like a rabbit on performance enhancing drugs.

“Say goodbye to Shatterstar,” Mikey calls, slamming the basement door behind him.

Gerard sinks back into their chair. “Goodbye, Shatterstar,” they whisper.

*

The play goes off without a single hitch. Everyone loves it, even the students, and Gerard looks fucking killer in their Party Poison jacket, which they’re allowed to keep, since it's tailored to them. Ryan does everyone’s makeup like a damn professional, and Brendon is the quintessential Mercutio— campy, exaggerated, madcap and wonderful, Spencer the perfect gentler counterpart to his unpredictable tango.

The second Gerard steps off the stage, grinning and exhausted, dodging various claps on the shoulder and Good job’s from strangers and parents, Frank is there, pulling them backstage by the wrist, finding an empty supply closet to press his back up against stone and kiss them.

“You were so hot up there, Gee,” he says, hands desperate and sure. “So hot. Strutting around like you owned the place, God, I wanted you all night. You were amazing.”

Gerard gasps, “All night?” as Frank sucks a wet mark onto their throat, where the collar of his jacket barely covers it. The thought gives them a little thrill, makes their stomach twist.

“All night,” Frank says, pushing his hand down the front of Gerard’s pants.

“Frankie, we can’t,” Gerard says, but they arch into his palm anyway. “Someone will see.”

“Let them,” Frank says, breathless, rubbing Gerard off, twisting his fingers like a man possessed. “Let them see how incredible you are.”

“Don’t get come on my costume,” Gerard orders, tipping their head back against the wall. “They said I can keep the jacket but I have to— fuck, yeah, like that— I have to give the pants back. Tomorrow. Frankie. I’m so serious.”

“I heard you,” Frank says, dropping to his knees. “I’ll just swallow.”

Gerard bites into their wrist trying to keep silent, other hand clenched white-knuckle tight in Frank’s hair. It’s messy sex, in a dark corner, and Gerard is sweaty and sticky with makeup, high on adrenaline and pride and the way Frank smells, and it’s good, fast and filthy. When they’re done, Frank gets to his feet, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and zips a boneless Gerard back into their pants, easy as you please.

“Do you want…” Gerard murmurs, gesturing weakly to Frank’s obvious boner.

“No,” Frank says, running his fingers through his hair and straightening his shirt. “I want to wait. I want to go out there and give my congratulations to everyone and walk back to your place hard and aching for it the whole way, knowing that when we get to your room, you’re gonna sit back on your bed and watch me make a mess of myself. Is that cool?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s, y’know.” Gerard waves a hand, already turned on again. “Cool.”

*

Gerard Way’s transgender awakening starts with color, with red lipstick and pink underwear and blue feelings, with an orange sky and a star and a kiss in the witching hours of Frank’s eighteenth Halloween, with a best friend and a brother and a lover and a person occasionally called Gee, a person full of life and light and wonder, a person who, finally, after so many years of searching, knows exactly who they are. Gerard Way’s transgender awakening starts, but it will never truly finish. Gerard is awakened and awakening every day, eyes always opening wider; there is always more to know, more to discover, more to fall in love with. The universe is expanding another fraction every second— and Gerard fully intends to see all of it.