Chapter Text
Frank takes a long, deep breath before dialing Gerard’s extension.
The woman in front of him is tall but slight, unimposing and twitchy like she’s about to crawl out of her own skin. His age, maybe a bit older—it’s hard to tell with her face the same sickly shade of pale as the stained laminate countertop and the knuckles she’s got wrapped around it.
“It’ll be okay,” he mumbles, and he tries to sound like he believes it. He should believe it. He’s good at what he does.
Frank Iero has the art of favor-asking down to a fine science. Four rings or less before pickup means he’s good to go. Five or six means he’s interrupted something, but if he plays extra nice it’s usually fine. Any more than seven means he’s either being ignored on purpose or ignored in a way that is unavoidable. Since the unavoidable variety of ignoring seems to involve bodily fluids, like, way more often than not, eight rings is usually the point where he gives up and tries another doctor.
Except he can’t do that this time. All he can do is cross his fingers and tell himself it’ll be fine.
It will be fine. It will be fine, and Gerard will say yes.
Gerard takes on patients most doctors will do anything to avoid. Gerard comes in early and stays back late and picks up shifts and he always says hi to Triage. Frank has seen Gerard stand eye to eye with screaming family members and maintain a comforting, empathetic smile. He’s seen Gerard take patients from spitting insults in his face to dragging up their google reviews. In fact, in the four months and change Frank has been at Mercy Medical he has seen Gerard refuse a total of one patient, and it was because the guy called Frank a 'useless little faggot'.
He takes another breath.
The problem is that Frank has, like, kind of a high-baseline level of nerves when it comes to Gerard. The Problem—capital P for emphasis—is that this has a whole lot of nothing to do with Gerard.
Gerard is innocent of literally anything that could justify Frank’s current blood pressure levels because Gerard is, above all things, an absolute sweetheart. Friendly even though he’s obviously shy, charming even though he’s obviously awkward, funny when he lets go of himself enough to allow it. And he got really, really mad at that one guy, and Frank is pretty sure it wasn't just on behalf of nursing assistants everywhere.
All of this is, unfortunately, a key consideration in Frank’s current stand-off with the phone, because Gerard is all those things and one of the most beautiful human beings Frank has ever seen in his life. Gerard will say yes because he always says yes, because he’s a good person. Enough that Frank sometimes wishes that he didn’t and he wasn’t, because sometimes he would like to pretend Gerard always says yes for him, specifically.
So, okay. The stand-off has a whole lot of everything to do with Gerard, it’s just not his fault. The fact that Frank is sitting there in suspended fucking animation, one hand gripping the receiver and the other hovering above the dial-pad—all of that is entirely on him. He takes yet another deep breath, keys in the number, and starts counting.
It picks up on the second ring.
“Hi, Dr Way!” he chirps, because that feels like a good sign, “I’m sorry to ask, I know you’re on break, but—”
“I just started eating dinner.”
Frank Iero does not, apparently, have the art of favor asking down to a fine science.
“What?” he asks, before his brain can catch up with his mouth. “It’s, like, half midnight.”
The sigh he receives in response is so loud and so pointed that he can almost feel the puff of warm breath through the receiver.
“Yeah. Believe it or not, I’m aware of that.”
It’s fine. It’ll be fine. He’s pretty sure he deserved that, actually, because Frank knows Gerard has been in since seven. He knows this because Gerard said hi on his way in, because Gerard always says hi. Tonight the ‘hi’ in question was a warm, tired smile and a quiet ‘evening, lovelies’ that Frank still wants to believe was just for him. Even though the lovelies was pluralised, and Nicole was literally right next to him at the triage desk, and—
“Can you find anyone else?”
More to the point, Frank knows Gerard has been in since seven because Frank can see his books open on the screen in front of him. They’re full. Overloaded, in fact.
He glances at the patient. She’s hunched over, mottled under the competing white-yellow-pink glow of multiple slowly-fading fluorescents. It makes the shadows on her jump out, casts them under her eyes and her cheekbones and her larynx.
“I—” he starts, and cuts himself off before he can finish because he fucking can’t and he knows it. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can explain it over the phone, but it’s—I think it has to be you.”
The line is silent.
“Please trust me,” he adds, and he doesn’t even bother trying not to sound helpless.
Gerard lets out a quiet, resigned, wounded-sounding groan, allowing it to hang in the static between them for at least a few seconds too long. “Okay.”
Frank has to yank the receiver away from his face for a moment so he can finally breathe again as deep as he needs to without it being audible down the line.
“Thank you,” he whispers, quietly and to nothing—then again, louder and into the receiver, “thank you, thank you, you’re the best.”
He swears he hears a brief, dry laugh down the phone before the line goes dead, and for a moment he’s so absolutely psyched that until the patient clears her throat, Frank forgets the entire reason he was asking favors to begin with.
“Are you sure? I can think of something else. I mean, it is kinda my fault—”
“Room seven,” Frank cuts her off, leaning in so he can lower his voice. “Doctor Way is great. He’ll understand. Just tell him what you told me, and listen very carefully to the questions he asks you, yeah? And if he’s a bit—” Frank pauses, glancing down at the receiver as if Gerard could somehow still be listening down the line. “If he’s a bit tense, it’s not you. Okay?”
—
It’s quiet once 1am hits. It always is—except for all the times it isn’t—but tonight is standard.
Standard last bus arrival, standard subsequent rush of everyone who was hoping to avoid spending the next few hours camped out in the free clinic waiting room. Standard triage, save for Frank’s little stunt. Hopefully a standard trickle for the next few hours, because even on the most standard of nights it takes just long enough to get through that midnight wave that by the time it’s done he’s fucking itching for a cigarette.
The air is crisp when he finally makes it out to the dingy staff smoking section. Not that that’s its intended purpose—officially, allegedly, it’s a courtyard—but Frank had learned on his first overnight that nobody in their right mind would spend any time there without the sweet promise of nicotine. It's sparse grey concrete, somehow simultaneously dry and dank, and the battered aluminium picnic table with the broken shade umbrella shoved into the far corner does little to detract from the grossness of the clinical waste bins lined up on the opposing wall. Frank extracts his pack of Marlboros, sighing as he flicks his lighter, and stares up at a mostly-starless sky.
It is safe to say that Mercy Medical is not what Frank imagined himself doing with his CNA.
It is safe to say, in fact, that Frank had not imagined himself doing anything with his CNA.
What Frank had imagined himself doing is: a short, government-funded qualification that he could “fall back on” after he dropped out of college to become a rock star.
What Frank had imagined himself doing is: getting his family off his back about dropping out of college so they’d let him become a rock star.
What Frank had imagined himself doing is becoming a fucking rock star.
At the very least, what Frank imagined himself doing involved less bodily fluids. Not even none, just… less.
What Frank had not imagined himself doing is actually having to fall back on the qualification that he got to fall back on. What Frank had definitely not imagined himself doing is haranguing his weird, hot, quasi-recluse coworker into committing... dubiously legal medical practice. Frank is pretty sure it is not technically a crime. Mostly. Frank is a good 90% sure that he did not ask his weird, hot, quasi-recluse coworker to commit a crime.
He’s two nervous puffs into his second cigarette when he hears the door creak. Frank keeps his eyes trained down on the way the bright fluorescence slices across the cracked pavers, tracking the emergence of another person like a sundial.
“Frank! It’s you! Good!”
“It’s me! Good!” he echoes, immediately regretting it once he registers the soft, high voice he’s responding to.
Gerard. Of course it's Gerard. Even shrouded in shadow with the light spilling out behind him, he's ethereal in the way a person in scrubs just shouldn’t be—big eyes and pointy little nose, mousy-brown hair glowing like a messy halo. He makes a face, mouth twisting to one side as he pats the scrubs in question then frowning down at his own hands as if he needs visual confirmation that his pockets are in fact empty. His expression when he looks back is equal parts guilty and helpless.
Frank extends one arm to offer Gerard a cigarette. It might approximate a very cool and suave move if not for the fact that instead of holding out the pack—which he is still literally gripping—he holds out the cigarette he just lit. The cigarette he just took a drag of.
Gerard, apparently unbothered, closes the distance between them in a couple of strides and plucks it from Frank’s hand without even really looking at him. “Thanks,” he nods. Frank swallows the spit pooling in his mouth and belatedly hopes he didn’t leave the filter too soggy.
Gerard’s eyes fall shut as he takes a drag, and they stay shut when he takes another. Which is good, because Frank is open-mouth staring. He doesn’t even realize his arm is still extended until Gerard places the cigarette back between his fingers.
Frank shoves it back in his own mouth, wordlessly holding out the pack and desperately hoping he looks normal. Normal and reasonable and not like he’s internally freaking out because his weird, hot, quasi-recluse colleague just put something that touched Frank’s lips between his lips and then gave it back to Frank to put between his own lips again. Fucking hell.
His weird, hot, quasi-recluse coworker is still hovering, so Frank flicks the pack open and raises his eyebrows. After what seems like a significant mental back and forth, Gerard nods.
“Thanks,” he says, again. “I owe you one. I just... wanted to apologize, I guess. For before, for bein’ so...” He gestures as he trails off, twists and flicks one hand in a little circle before deftly extracting a cigarette with the other. He’s not wearing a wedding ring.
“It’s cool. I was asking a lot of you.”
Frank tries not to pay attention to his own hands as he extends his lighter. It’s the same bright yellow Bic he’s been keeping in his locker since he started. He should probably replace it, finally buy a nice zippo or something. Maybe that would make him seem—fucking cooler or some shit. Cooler and more mature, more refined, more anything that isn’t as out of his depth as he feels right now.
Maybe if he thinks about all that he won’t think about his fingers on this lighter, won’t wonder if it’s obvious how much he wants them to brush against Gerard’s when he hands it over. Won't let it show on his face how his heart leaps into his throat when they do.
“You were.” Gerard reaches up, scrubbing a hand over his eyes before he lights his (fresh, non-spit-tarnished) cigarette. The two seconds of brilliant orange that illuminate his face are enough to make Frank’s palms sweat. He’s got such long eyelashes. “She was asking a lot of you, too.”
He hands the lighter back by the end. Their hands don’t touch this time. Frank sinks down on the picnic bench, the curved lip of the tabletop digging into his spine, and tries to keep his leg from jiggling.
“Why me?”
Frank sighs. The thing is, there’s kind of no way to tell someone on a phone call you’re making in front of a room full of people that the favor you’re asking of them is not exactly above-board. Especially if the room full of people is a waiting room, and the people are patients, and the person you’re asking favors from is another medical professional. Especially when you still don’t know where the favor even sits in the hierarchy of favor-asking, other than having (in the assessment of one Frank Iero) a roughly 10% chance of being against the law and a roughly 1000% chance of being against organizational policy.
“Ray—Doctor Toro—he told me you’d done stuff like that before.” He cringes at himself even as he says it. The words feel clumsy in his mouth, like he’s still a kid playing dress-up in adult clothes he’ll never really grow into. And Gerard is just... watching him. Swaying slightly, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, regarding Frank like he’s some kind of puzzle to be solved.
“In a good way,” Frank adds, over the staccato tapping of his own nervous energy made manifest against the gravel. “We’ve known each other a long time, and he’s—y'know, he’s seen some shit go down for people I love, and I guess...” He shrugs. Gerard is still staring. “He knew I’d respect it.” He takes a long, deliberate drag. It’s meant to signal that it’s Gerard’s turn to say something. Frank startles when, instead, Gerard settles next to him on the bench.
“Okay.”
Realistically speaking, he is a perfectly reasonable distance away. Not far enough for it to be deliberate, not close enough for Frank to even begin to get his hopes up. An extremely unremarkable distance.
“Yeah?” Frank asks, because it feels like he can’t possibly be getting off that easy, and Gerard laughs.
“Yeah. Ray’s a good guy. I trust him, he trusts you. It sounds like you’re—familiar with addiction, yeah?” He quirks an eyebrow, waiting exactly as long as it takes for Frank to half-nod, half-shrug his confirmation before placing the cigarette back into his mouth. Frank watches his eyes fall shut again as he inhales. They fix somewhere in the middle distance when he reopens them, right around the point where the pavement meets the rocky ground. “I am also… familiar with addiction. There’s not always a lotta empathy. I’m glad you asked.”
“Yeah?” Frank asks—again, because he’s really not sure what else to say. Gerard smiles at him. Even from a completely unremarkable distance, the crows feet that crinkle up around his eyes make Frank weak.
“Yeah. It was the right thing to do.”
“Cool! Good. Sorry, I—um,” Frank laughs. It comes out sounding mostly un-strangled. “I still don’t actually know if I just asked you to commit a crime.”
Gerard stares at him for a beat, searching, and then stifles a snort. “You got some stones on you, Frank Iero,” he says, and he says it to the ground but he follows it with a cheeky little glance in Frank’s direction.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Mmm. You didn’t, technically speaking. And I probably shouldn’t say this, but—shit,” he shakes his head, “even if you had, I dunno if I could’ve said no. Not for something like that.”
He picks at the knee of his scrubs, worrying at a thread that isn’t quite loose yet but looks like it will be soon. Frank nods. His leg is jiggling again, and it feels unfair that he only notices it now and not when it was still; that he didn’t get to feel the tension dissipate the same way he feels it return.
“Can I—ugh.” Gerard Groans, rubbing at his face. “I’m trying to work out how to ask this without committing a HIIPA violation.”
Frank tugs his traitorous fucking leg up so his ankle rests on his opposite knee and takes a very concerted pull from the end of his very dying smoke. “Well, I can tell you what she told me, right?” He barely waits for a shrug of assent before he’s speaking again.
“‘Cause what she told me is that her rehab pulled some biological sex bullshit and tried to make her piss-test in front of a fuckin’ dude. And,” he coughs, the acrid taste of smoking to the filter suddenly too sharp in his throat, “if that wasn’t bad enough, he brought one of the other motherfuckers to watch. Like she’s a fuckin’ zoo animal.”
Gerard just sighs. It’s as good as confirmation.
Frank grunts, tossing his burned-out cigarette onto the ground. He mashes it into the dirt with his shoe and then spits beside it, a sudden reprise of the rage he had to tamp down while she was still standing in front of him explaining how she’d ended up there. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Gerard nudges the tip of his shoe up against Frank’s. He’s wearing converse. Frank wants to claw his own face off. “Did that part... also factor into you asking me?"
It catches him off guard even though he can’t explain why. Gerard’s face is open but unreadable, and Frank gets as far as opening his mouth to speak before he realizes he has nothing to say.
“I dunno.” He stalls, bending to retrieve his flattened cigarette butt and turning to deposit it in the old, cracked, portable sharps disposal container that’s served as Mercy’s ashtray since long before Frank got hired. “I just kinda figured you’d get it.”
‘I figured you’d get it’ is a hell of a way to say ‘you’re the only person I know here who has a history of committing dubiously legal medical practice and a pride flag lanyard’, but there’s a barely-there smile tugging at the side of Gerard’s mouth so Frank feels okay assuming he’s made his point.
“Good to know.” Gerard tosses his own waning cigarette to the ground, crushing it much more daintily than Frank had. He stills for a moment, considering, before he bends to retrieve it.
“For future reference, Frank—technically speaking—I don’t need to hear anything you just told me. For that sort of script, I just need to know that the patient is in a lotta pain. I can’t do it all the time, but…” He pauses, staring at the flattened filter still caught between fingers as if he’d been too quick on the draw extinguishing it. Like he can will one last hit of nicotine out of it with his eyes alone. “If the patient has no other options, then I can write that sorta script. For that sorta pain.”
He gives Frank a meaningful stare, mouth pressed into a thin line like he’s trying very hard to contain something. Frank has the distinct impression he has just been extended membership to a secret and at least semi-exclusive club.
“Good to know,” he echoes.
“I should get back to it. Thanks, by the way. For this,” Gerard waves the cigarette butt briefly between them before turning to drop it into the makeshift ashtray. “And for asking.”
Frank opens his mouth to say—something. Anything, really. But Gerard stands, rolling out his shoulders, and he’s fucking beautiful, and he’s wearing this small, sweet smile that Frank can only assume is what he’s been keeping hidden behind his tightly-pursed, unreasonably pink lips, and suddenly Frank’s brain is too empty and too crowded all at once.
“Anytime,” he replies, eventually. It’s lost in the crunch of gravel underfoot, Gerard already striding swiftly and purposefully back to the door. He pauses once he reaches it, one hand holding his swipe to the card reader and one on the handle, hovering like he has something else to add. Frank tries his best to school his features into something at least approaching the way you’re meant to look at your coworkers when they speak to you.
“Take care,” Gerard says, finally. Then he’s gone.