Sequel: Gerard Way: Artist

Frank Iero: P.A.

Epilogue

“Care to go again?” Gerard asks breathlessly.

I roll off him and gasp for air. “You’ve... got... t-to be... kidding – we only j-just finished. And we’ve done it so many times today already.”

Gerard smirks and presses the tip of my nose with his finger. “I didn’t hear you complaining the first five times we did it.”

I prop myself up onto my elbows. “Well, it’s fun while you’re doing it, I’m just dreading all the bruises I’ll have in the morning.”

“There won’t be any more than usual,” he says dismissively as he gets to his feet. I watch him dust off his thighs before he heads for the kitchen.

I stare after him incredulously. “You stood on my hand!”

“I apologised for that.”

A sudden burst of energy tears through me and I jump to my feet, chasing after him. “No you didn’t! You said I shouldn’t have put my hand where you were about to put your foot!”

He shrugs. “Same thing.”

“It is not!”

“You two have been at it again, haven’t you?” Emma-Lea says accusingly as she strides into the kitchen, her arms folded over her chest. “Didn’t we establish last week that you guys weren’t allowed to play Twister anymore?”

Gerard copies her stance and meets her eyes. “Hey – who are the adults here?”

“Clearly neither of you,” she replies quickly. She unfolds her arms and heads for the refrigerator where she grabs a bottle of water.

Emma-Lea has grown up so quickly. Actually, that’s a lie. She has grown up at the same rate as everyone else her age, it’s just odd looking at her now and seeing a fifteen year old girl instead of the cute little five year old she used to be.

Gerard and I have had a pretty great ten years together. Things still feel so new and fresh with us that it hardly feels like it’s been a decade. We, for Emma-Lea’s sake, took things quite slow when we started dating. At first we limited ourselves to one official date a fortnight. We would visit each other at our homes a couple of times a week, but there was no touching or kissing as Emma-Lea was always present; we never wanted her to feel excluded. The original plan was to wait at least six months before we told her we were dating, but by month two she had grown impatient and demanded to know when we were going to be “boyfriend and boyfriend”. As you can expect, we became a lot more intimate with each other after that.

It took a long time for us to actually have sex, though. We both wanted to – Gerard really wanted to – and we tried several times, but I was very scared. For me, when we finally did do it, it wasn’t this big “ah-ha! This is what I’ve been missing” moment. It was fucking terrifying! I mean, come on – how the hell do women do that. No amount of stretching and prepping can prepare you for the moment when something that size enters you from behind. It’s safe to say, I liked it far better when I was the one doing the entering. Eventually – thankfully – I got used to the sensation, and soon enough sex became as pleasurable for me as it was for Gerard.

Gerard and I had been together almost two years before we took the plunge and moved in together. We had spoken about it a couple of times over the course of our relationship; each time we both agreed that it would be too much too soon for Emma-Lea. The funny thing was, it was little Emma-Lea that pushed for it to happen.

“When is Uncle Frank going to live here?”

Gerard choked on a mouthful of coffee. “Em!”

“What?” she asked innocently. “He’s here every day, and sometimes he doesn’t go home at night – the only different thing is that his toothbrush would be in the bathroom.”


We were shocked for two reasons when she said that. The first was because we thought we had been discreet enough with our little sleepovers that she hadn’t noticed. The second was that the seven year old was right. So, a week later I put my toothbrush in the bathroom, and it felt one hundred percent right.

Living with Gerard was different the second time around. There were far less rules actually in place, but in my head it felt like there were more. I was unsure about what the limits of physical intimacy were. We had a seven year old running about the place, so I didn’t want to do anything inappropriate. Well, not quite. Actually, I didn’t want to do anything inappropriate and get caught by said seven year old. She was, and still is, quite nosy. We, through a lot of trial and error, established our boundaries, though. There was a system we put in to place where we would both make lists of every little intimate thing we wanted to do to each other that day – ranging from hugs to special hugs – that we didn’t get to do, and then when we went to bed we would complete each other’s lists. It was always quite fun.

“Actually, if I remember correctly, wasn’t the agreement that there would be no more Twister nights until after I left for the Summer?” Emma-Lea says rhetorically after taking a swig of her water.

Our little girl is off to Italy on a school trip over the Summer vacation. She won’t be away for the entire three months, but those four weeks will surely feel like it. Gerard and I are both apprehensive about the whole thing, but we know – as Ellie likes to keep reminding us – that Emma-Lea has to be given the chance to spread her wings; she’s not going to live with us forever.

“But it’s so much fun!” I whine at her, half serious, half joking.

She gives me a deadpan look that she picked up from Gerard when she hit puberty. “So is Disneyland, but it doesn’t mean you have to go there every night.”

“Oh, Em, sweet, innocent, little Em – if we lived in California, we would be there every night,” I replied emphatically.

“Uncle Gee, please promise me that when I come back from Italy, we will not have moved to California,” Emma-Lea said.

I turned toward Gerard. He is propped against the stove with his arms folded across his chest. There is an amused smile playing about his lips. He always gets that way when Emma-Lea and I have mock fights like this.

“We won’t move, don’t worry,” Gerard replies, still smirking. His features turn serious and he raises his eyebrows at me in question. I know what he’s asking immediately, and I nod so he knows it’s okay to tell her what we’ve been discussing the past six months. “We may have another surprise for you, though.”

“A surprise?” she asks curiously. A grin breaks out on her face. “Are you guys getting me a car? Am I going to have my very own car?!”

Gerard shakes his head, then gestures to the dining table. “Take a seat. We need to talk to you.”

She sits down cautiously. Emma-Lea is a good kid, but I can tell she’s trying to figure out what she did wrong. She’s not in trouble, though, we’re just not sure how she’s going to react to what we have to tell her.

“Em,” Gerard begins, “you know that Frank and I have been together for a long time, and that we love each other and you more than anything or anyone else–”

“Are you breaking up?” she asks nervously, looking genuinely scared about the answer.

“No, nothing like that,” Gerard replies quickly.

“Your Uncle Gee is far too obsessed to let me go,” I tell her, recalling his art collection of me that’s proudly displayed all around the house.

Emma-Lea smiles, knowing it’s kind of true. “Then what is it?”

Gerard takes a deep breath, exhales, then says, “Frank and I, we’ve been thinking about having a baby together for some time now – years in fact. So a few months ago we started getting in touch with adoption agencies. Nothing is set in stone yet, but there are some good options out there. But we’re not going to do anything else unless you’re okay with it.”

The room becomes eerily silent. Gerard and I really want to adopt a child together, to be parents together – proper parents – but if our niece isn’t comfortable with it, then we won’t let ourselves go through with it. She seems to think it over intently as time stretches on, looking up to the ceiling while she wrings her fingers. As she thinks, I grab Gerard’s hand under the table and squeeze it reassuringly. Out of the two of us, I’m more confident in how she will react.

“So, you’ll be dad’s, and I’ll kind of have a little brother or sister?” she asks after a long while. We both nod tentatively. She smiles ecstatically. “That’s fantastic!”

She gets up and comes round to hug us both and kisses our cheeks sloppily. We all head into the living room and discuss the prospect of having a baby around the house further. Gerard and I are both astounded about how well she is taking it. The thing that had always concerned us about our having a baby was that it would make Emma-Lea long for Alicia and Mikey, that she’d be resentful because she has no parents and would never have the possibility of having siblings. After almost half an hour of talking, Gerard was brave enough to bring up that point to her.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t want you guys to have a baby? That’s stupid. Of course I miss my parents – I miss them every day – but you’ve both done such a great job of raising me. I would never want to take the opportunity to be raised by you away from another child who doesn’t have parents... like me.” She looks downcast for a second, but then smiles at us reassuringly. “I love you guys, and I know you love me, and the three of us will love this baby as much as we love each other.”

“You’re the best, Em,” I say, squeezing her wrist gently.

She beams at me. “I know.”

We talk for a little while longer, less about the actual process and more about the trivial things – gender, colours to paint the nursery, baby clothes. Emma-Lea gets more and more excited as the conversation goes on. As she talks about a cute baby dress she saw at the mall last week I catch Gerard’s eye over her head. He smiles at me happily and mouths “I love you”. I whisper it back, meaning it now more than I ever have.

Emma-Lea sighs happily. “We are going to be the best fucked up family ever.”

“Hey!” Gerard and I shout in unison.

“Oh, boohoo – I swore. What does it matter? You guys are going to be dads - and I couldn’t be happier.”

She smiles at us both once more, then gets up from between us on the sofa and heads up to her bedroom. I scoot closer to Gerard and he puts his arm around my shoulder.

“We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?” he asks me softly.

“Definitely,” I reply. “And Em’s right, we are going to the best fucked up family ever.”

“For better or worse,” he says with a smile.

I kiss his cheek. “Until death do us part.”
♠ ♠ ♠
And here we are, at the very end of Frank Iero: P.A. after almost a whole year.

Despite finding out this week that two people had taken my story and posted it somewhere else without my knowledge, I want to thank each and every single one of you who has taken the time to read and comment on this story, no matter where you found it. You are all amazing and have given me the drive to keep this story going. I'm extremely proud of Frank Iero: P.A. and feel so blessed to receive such a fantastic response to it.

Until we meet again, I love you guys... and I could be back sooner than you think ;)