The Perfect Foundation

Gerard met Brendon when he was ten and Brendon was eight. He was scribbling furiously in a sketchpad underneath a tree in his backyard when a small figure vaulted over the top of his garden wall, shimmied down it and landed in a confused mess of limbs and floppy hair.

He then righted himself, saluting at Gerard with a huge smile on his face and then taking off like rabbit across the lawn and down the alleyway to the main street.

Quiet and introverted as he was at ten, Gerard stared off in the direction that the boy had gone in, thinking that if anyone wanted to be Spiderman when they grew up - that boy had a fighting chance. He looked down at his sketch of batman and robin and frowned. Now he wanted to draw spiderman. It wasn't a complete coincidence that after that moment, all Gerard's Peter Parker drawings supported floppy bowl-cut style hair-dos.

The Way brother caught Brendon sprinting across his parents' back garden several times between significant meeting number one and number two.

Both boys even ended up on passive speaking terms due to their repeated encounters around the neighbourhood - it turned out Brendon lived in the house behind the Way's - and the reason he frequented their garden was because it was the quickest shortcut to his church.

A couple of years of this behaviour and one particularly hot summer found twelve year-old Gerard sprawled under his tree in a light doze. Suddenly, out of the blue there was a muffled thump and the older boy opened his eyes to find Brendon stood at the bottom of the wall several feet away looking his usual mussed self, but instead of pelting across the grass as he normally did he shuffled towards Gerard and sat down nervously, but decisively in front of him, drawing his knees up and resting his elbows on them as he peered at Gerard from under a curtain of sun-dappled brown hair.

Gerard took this in his stride - he did have a younger brother after all - and smiled at Brendon.

"Hey, I'm Gerard."

Brendon nodded enthusiastically.

"Brendon. Can I, like...?"

"Yep, sure. You're not going to church today?"

"No..." The boy trailed off uncertainly, and drew into himself, resting his chin on his knees.

"That's ok." Gerard told him, feeling like he should reassure him.

Brendon didn't say anything in return, but just sat there quietly, staring off into the distance. It turned out that that moment was one of the few times Brendon was ever completely still and quiet, and that had also been the day that Brendon had first doubted his faith.

After that, being around Brendon was like being briefly captured by a hurricane and then thrown back into life without quite knowing what had hit you.When the two boys started high school, although they ran in different crowds they still managed random points of contact.

Where Brendon just glomped Gerard in the hallways, Gerard offered to drive Brendon home with his own brother Mikey, since they lived so close to eachother. Gerard also found himself stepping in when Brendon was bullied for being too crazy, sometimes borderline camp and far too nice and friendly for his own good. Combining all these moments together it was with shock that one day Brendon just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Gerard had noticed that Brendon seemed to be down recently, perhaps because of his family, Gerard thought in hindsight, and seemed to be drawing into himself more and more, as though he didn't want to live life at the moment. Even the bullies gave up when teasing him when they didn't get a rise and punching him actually worked cause he didn't fight back.

Although they weren't terribly close, Gerard felt a lot of loyalty towards the kid and saw him as a second younger brother. After a few weeks of quiet, morose Brendon, Gerard finally caved and found himself dragging Brendon out of class on a sunny Thursday afternoon by pretending that he was going to be violently ill all over Brendon's desk.

Ironically, this made Brendon perk up a little with concern and between Gerard grabbing Brendon's arm and Brendon being threatened with vomit, both boys stumbled out of the classroom in a hurry towards the bathroom.

"No," Gerard protested dramatically, actually quite enjoying faking sickness, "I need some air."

Brendon obeyed immediately and half-carried the smaller boy onto the school playing field. Gerard consequently collapsed in a heap on the grass in the cool autumn breeze, clutching his head and breathing in and out slowly.

Brendon let him be for a minute, depositing himself down next to Gerard in a cross-legged position, then put his hand on Gerard's shoulder worriedly.

"Are you ok?"

Gerard grinned to himself at his genius plan and removed his hands from his face to grin at Brendon and throw himself back on the grass unconcernedly.

"Not bad thanks, you?" The dark-haired boy just stared at him uncomprehendingly for a second before glaring and punching Gerard playfully on the shoulder.

"You! What the hell?!" Gerard laughed.

"Why the hell did you fake it to get out of class?!"

"Miss. Simpson is pretty boring don't you think?"

"Well yeah but you could have given me a heads up."

"It was more fun that way." Gerard winked at him and Brendon made a face.

"You're such a diva at heart, you know that Gee?"

"You love it." Both boys smiled at eachother for a beat then Gerard switched to serious.

"I needed to talk to you." He told Brendon.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Oh come on, you've been acting like someone's died." Then the older boy blanched visibly, "Noone's died, right?"

Brendon half-smiled at this.

"No, noones died, don't worry!"

"Phew, thought I'd put my foot in it there." He half-smiled back, "So what's up then?"

"It's complicated..." sighed the brunette.

"We have the whole of fourth period." Encouraged Gerard stubbornly. Brendon stuck his tongue out at him, then thought about how he wanted to answer, lying back next to his friend and staring at the whispy blue sky.

"I think..." He took a breath, "That I'm gay." Then he appeared to be holding his breath as though Gerard would shout at him or something.

The older boy flipped onto his stomach and rose on his elbows to peer quizzically down at Brendon. The dark-haired boy met his gaze, and Gerard was shocked by the fear in his eyes. Dear Lord, he was going to cry on him.

"That's cool." He replied quickly, and Brendon's mouth fell open in surprise.

"What?!"

"I said it's cool. I'm cool with it. Guys liking guys doesn't bother me." Brendon frowned up at him with an 'are you shitting me?' expression on his face.

"But it's wrong.." It was Gerard's turn to frown.

"How is it wrong?" He genuinely didn't understand. Brendon was speechless for a second, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish.

"God...the bible...men just aren't, they just can't." He gestured vaguely, as though this totally did all the explaining.

"But dude, it's not like you can help it. I mean, surely what you feel," Gerard did some hopeless gesturing of his own, "You're not making it up, if you get me."

"Well of course I'm not making it up!"

"Well then, don't you think God would forgive you?"

Brendon was silent for a moment.

"Well, maybe..." He almost whispered, "But I dunno about my mom. And my dad, well..."

"They should accept you for who you are." Gerard told him firmly, with all the certainty of the young.

"I know. I just...wish I could just...fit in, y'know? I try really hard but noone seems to like me at school."

"No way. What about me?!"

Brendon smiled wryly, which he shouldn't have had to do at such a young age.
"Apart from you."

"You're wrong. You're way more popular than me."

"Yeah, I guess. But it doesn't mean anything, y'know. People don't like me for me, they just...follow the crowd. They're all fake, I hate it."

"Well that's just high school, Bren."

"It shouldn't be like that." Muttered Brendon stubbornly.

Gerard nodded in silent agreement and for the rest of the lunch break they talked about what they would do in a fantasy world, and how everything would be so much cooler. And that was the last Gerard saw of his friend before the world went to shit 3 days later. Sure things had steadily been getting worse over the past few decades or so but when the apocalypse hit no one was prepared for the devastation.