Requested on Tumblr
Reader: male
Warnings: homophobic slurs, Spoiler Alert for 'Love Simon'
Word count: 3 424
A/N: I watched 'Love Simon' (so spoiler alert) a while ago and got seriously upset about his friends' behavior after he got outed. And I wanted to put things right in a way, because there has to be some weird shit going on with me if I don't befriend the forcibly outed kid when I notice none of their friends are around.
Your eyes flickered over the screen again and again, not able to believe what you were reading. You reloaded the page, just to be sure, but the black letters were still clearly being displayed on the school's anonymous confession website.
"Gerard Way is a fag"
You were not sure which part of the statement was disturbing you the most. Obviously this was not the way someone wanted to come out. You would not want to come out like that at least. So someone had outed this boy, probably without his consent. Someone who was, judging by the word they had chosen, homophobic.
It was no secret that your school was not the most LGBT+ friendly ground in town, but it still disgusted you. And then there was that name. You had never really talked to Gerard before, but you knew he was in art class with one of your friends. Apparently he was pretty good a drawing. And he would definitely not have been on top of your 'who might be gay but not out'-list. You did not really have a list, neither on paper nor in your mind, but Gerard really was not within the first twenty names you would have said if someone had asked you who you thought was gay on your school. Of course you could not just look at people and tell if they were homosexual, but being gay yourself, you would have expected some sort of instinct or something kick in. Apparently not.
Anyway, Gerard was one of the lonely punk students at your school. You knew he had a brother, Mikey, but he was younger and not yet on the same school, his friend Ray had moved away before summer break and other than him you had never seen anyone talk to Gerard.
You wondered if he knew. Did he just sit in front of his laptop, like you? Was his heart beating faster, his chest imploding, tears falling down his cheeks? You knew that would be your reaction if someone outed you, especially like that. 'Gerard Way is a faggot', who would write, say, or even think something like that? Had people no respect for each other? Why could some people not just accept that love is love? On the other hand, you knew why you were not out. Because there were too many people who were not tolerant, and you were not even sure if your friends would have your back.
~*~
You had kind of hoped that Gerard's sexuality would not be topic number one when you walked to school with your friends on the first day of the new school year. But the post was barely a week old, and people were too excited to see Gerard, now that they knew this thing about him, that seemed to change the way they looked at him. Idiots.
The lunch room was as crowded as you remembered. People pushed around and tried to get their favorite spots in the room. You sat at a table close to the door, a warm breeze of late summer air blowing past your bare arms.
"Okay, but seriously? I always thought something was weird about him," your friend Gina declared, placing her tablet down next to yours and sliding into the bench, her knee brushing against yours.
"But he a girlfriend last year, right," Paul, another one of your friends replied, making space for Mark, the fourth in the group.
"Imagine how she must be feeling right now," he said, looking across the hall to where the girl was sitting.
"Imagine how he must be feeling right now," you answered, not being able to stay quiet any longer. "Imagine some ass posts something so personal about you, how would you feel?"
Your blood was boiling, had been since you had seen that post last week, but within the last hours, you really, really had gotten very angry. Especially at whoever had submitted that post. And since the submission box of the website posted automatically, no one had checked it before it had been thrown out there, probably ruining this poor boys holiday, if not even high school time.
"It's something people deserve to know though," Mark shrugged.
"Deserve? What's wrong with you man," you wanted to jump up, shout, shake some sense into your friend, but you had to stay calm. "What next? Should everyone wear a sign around their neck, saying 'straight', or 'gay' or 'bi' or 'pan' or whatever?"
"Well, he's just trying to say it's not normal," Paul jumped in, making you even angrier.
"Normal? Of course it's normal, it's love. Love's normal. It's just not as common," you argued. Shit, you were seriously upset now. You felt personally attacked. And how should you not? They were basically insulting you. They just did not know it.
"It's just a little freakish," Gina said, definitely not helping.
"Freakish, how can-"
In that moment all noise around you stopped. People grew quiet and the white noise of clicking forks against porcelain faded, everyone staring at the door. Confused you turned around as well, and were met with the sight of a very pale Gerard Way. His long, black hair fell into his eyes, his shoulders were slumped and his black jacket was pulled tightly around his body, like a shield. He looked so lost and even a little scared, it broke your heart. And for the first time you noticed how pretty he actually was. It was a macabre beauty, dark circles under his eyes, greasy hair, looking a like a beaten dog, but he was beautiful. He would probably look breathtaking if he had a good night's sleep, a little bit of sunlight, and a shower. You wondered what his smile looked like, if his eyes would sparkle along, before realizing that now was probably one of the worst moments to realize you had just started crushing on him. After all you just had a discussion about homophobia with your friends.
About a hundred pairs of eyes followed the pale boy as he walked over to the serving counter and paid for a plate with pasta. Slowly the conversations started picking back up, but your eyes still followed Gerard. He looked around for a moment before sitting at the end of a table, a few seat away from a group of seniors. They stuck their heads together, before they all got up, carrying their full tablets to the next table. You wanted to run over and scream at them, but you stayed seated, instead just throwing another glance at Gerard. His head hung low, hair covering his face. And then you realized he was alone. No one sat with him. No one was there to talk to him, to comfort him.
"Look who's in the house! It's our faggot!" someone, doubtlessly one of the brainless jocks, screamed through the room, earning laughs left and right. Even your three friends laughed. "Wanna suck my dick?"
Enough was enough, you decided. Without another word, ignoring the questions of your friends, you got up and grabbed your tablet. Your mind was clouded with rage as you walked over to the almost empty table. Only the loud slamming of your plastic tablet against the table pulled you back into reality.
Gerard's head shot up at the noise, wide, hazel eyes staring up at you in fear. You ignored him and sat down in front of him, continuing your lunch without a word. When he was still staring at you after almost a minute you looked up.
"This seat is not taken, is it," you asked, lifting your eyebrows.
A smile tucked at Gerard's lips. Holy shit, he looked beautiful when he smiled.
"It is now," he answered, his cheeks hinting at a tinge of pink.
"Good," you said, smiling back at him before you continued eating.
~*~
You only realized that you had not thought of the consequences of your actions during the following days. After you had had lunch in silence, you finally started talking to Gerard, about art and music, about your families, about anything but his sexuality or his outing. And you noticed how much you had in common, yet how different you were.
During the following days, you started to hang out more with Gerard, during school, and after school. And what else would you have expected than an increasing number of homophobic slurs being thrown your way. Of course everyone assumed you were gay now, just because you hung out with someone who was. They were not wrong, but the rudeness, the unacceptance, the brutality of their words hurt you more than you wanted to admit to yourself.
So you stayed strong, during school at least. Gerard had it a lot worse than you, so you stayed strong for him. He sometimes told you to stay away from him, for your own sake, but you just laughed at that.
In fact it turned out that it had become impossible for you to stay away from him. A force stronger than gravity drew you towards him, and while you tried to convince yourself that you were not already head over heels for the dark haired punk, deep down you knew that that was a lie.
So you found yourself lying awake at night. The insults of the day made your throat tighten, your eyes burn and your heart heavy, but then you remembered Gerard, looked at the glowing display of your mobile portraying his profile picture, and you knew it was worth it.
It was yet another sleepless night, the bright screen of your mobile illuminating your face, when suddenly the door to your room slowly opened. You sat up in your bed, trying to spy through the darkness.
"(Y/n), are you still awake," you heard the familiar voice of your mother whisper.
"Yeah, you can come in," you answered, turning on the light on your bedside table.
Your mother was living alone with you in the small house, and judging by the time your alarm clock displayed she had just come home from her shift in the hospital where she worked as a nurse.
"Everything okay, dear," she asked, stepping into the room. Doubtlessly she had noticed your red eyes as she strode over to the bed and sat down on the blanket next to you.
"Yeah- I mean... not really, it's just-" you took a deep breath. You had thought these words through countless times, always thought how you wanted to come out to her, when, with which words. "Did I tell you about Gerard?"
"He's a new friend of yours, right," she recalled correctly.
"Yes, he- ahm... he's gay, you know," you carefully watched your mother's expression as you told her about Gerard's sexuality, but she just listened without showing any sign of emotional reaction. "He got outed during the last week of holidays, and... well, school's pretty much hell for him right now."
She nodded understandingly.
"The first day after holidays, he was sitting alone at lunch, and literally everyone stared at him, or talked about how being gay is freakish, and I just got... so... angry. So I went to sit with him, and yeah, that's how I know him."
"That was nice of you, I'm sure he's glad to have you," you mother told you, gently patting your arm when she noticed how upset you were about that topic.
"But since we started hanging out... people... they think I'm gay too, and I get all these insults and all this... I don't even know what to call it... hate? I walk through a corridor, and people just yell stuff, so Gerard asked me to stop hanging out with him, so I wouldn't get... you know, hurt," you stuttered. You didn't want to stop hanging out with Gerard, you didn't want to stop being friends with him. You wanted to get to know him better, you wanted to be closer to him, you wanted so much more than just friendship, but he tried to push you away. And you had to share your thoughts with someone, and your mother was the best choice for that, at least at the moment. But first of all you had to tell her something else, something that was bigger than the thing with Gerard.
Your mother was still thinking about your words, quietly nodding when you continued, your throat tight, your voice wet from tears.
"I'm in love with him," you confessed, biting your lip so it would not quiver, "I'm in love with Gerard, mum. And I've been in love with other boys before. I'm, I'm-"
You couldn't say it. Something inside you fought against that word, that label. Love is love, why did you have to label yourself?
"You are my son," your mother finished the sentence for you. "You are my son and you are beautiful and perfect and I feel very honored that you talk to me about these things."
She wrapped her arms around you, pulling you into an embrace. Her shirt still smelled of the disinfectant of the hospital, a smell that reminded you of your childhood. She patted your back for a while, whispering how proud she was of you.
"So..." you pulled away, your face heated from crying, your eyes burning and your voice hoarse. "About Gerard, what do you think should I do?"
"What do you want to do," your mother asked back.
You watched her, expected her to look differently at you now that you had come out, like all the people looked differently at Gerard now. But she just looked at you like she always had, with so much love in her eyes, the way only a mother can look at you.
"I want to be with him," you told her, and you really, really wanted to be with him.
"Then tell him, tell him exactly that," she smiled and patted your knee while you nodded.
"You knew, didn't you," you suddenly realized. "You knew I'm into boys."
A mysterious smile played around her lips. "Not really, I suspected it sometimes."
~*~
For the first time in this school year you felt actually confident when you entered the school building. You would tell Gerard how you felt about him, that you wanted him to be your boyfriend, to be his boyfriend. If he said no? Okay, not cool, but you could deal with that. You wouldn't just leave him alone in the mess that he was in due to him being outed. You would stay by his side, if he wanted that. And if he felt the same way? Then you would probably die of a heart attack, but that would be worth it.
You had showered and put on your favorite deodorant, your worn out Smashing Pumpkins shirt and some comfortable jeans. You felt ready to deal with whatever fate threw your way. Until you reached Gerard's locker.
Black spray paint letters spelled out the words 'fag' and 'cocksucker'. You wanted to vomit. For a while you stood next to Gerard who stared at his locker in silence. At first you felt paralyzed. You wanted to wish the slurs away, wanted to rip the door of the locker off and beat these bastards up with it, you wanted to delete all memory of this from Gerard's brain. But none of this was within the range of your capacity, so once you had stared at the locker for long enough, you grabbed Gerard's wrist and dragged him to the director's office.
It turned out to be a long conversation. The director listened to your story, which you told from the beginning, just to make sure he understood everything. Gerard just sat in his chair, head hanging low, wishing to be invisible. Then the director made Gerard tell his side of the story. The man in the big chair said some well-meant words of encouragement and told you that there was nothing he could do.
You stared at him disbelievingly.
"Are you seriously telling me that you can do nothing against bullies who insult and hurt and mentally scar one of your students," you asked, totally forgetting who you were talking to.
"You don't say it, maybe not even think it consciously, but somewhere inside this messed up brain of yours there is this rule that states that homosexuals, probably transgender kids as well, are worth less than your 'normal, everyday' student" you drew the quotation marks into the air. "You know who was gay? Oskar Wilde, and you teach his literature in school. You know who else was gay? Alan Turing, the father of modern computers. Hell, Turing even killed himself because of the way society treated him. And now everyone pities him. Do you really want to be the kind of person who tells a kid they're sick, or a freak or whatever fucked up insult your mind comes up with? Do you want to be the one who stands in front of the world, declaring love is wrong? Because that's all it is, love. Being gay is loving, being bi is loving, being lesbian is loving! It's just the 'wrong gender' you love. Wrong the fuck! It's society that's wrong if they think love can ever be wrong. Not talking about pedophiles or the fucked up abusive kind of love, I'm talking about mutual love. And maybe it hasn't come to your notice yet, but if you think discriminating against gays is some hip trend, then surprise! It's not and your views are obsolete. The UK, Germany, Australia, Sweden, France, countless other countries, do you know what they have in common? Same sex marriages are legalized. The states too, by the way. Because these governments seem to get what neither you, nor your homophobic student body, get: that it's just love after all, and that's the bloody truth!"
There was a stunned silence after you had spoken, and for a moment you were afraid that you would get suspended or something, but then the director nodded and agreed before promising he would take care of the matter.
When you were finally out of the stuffy office, standing in an empty corridor, you took a deep breath. You could feel Gerard's eyes on you, so you looked over at him.
"Those were some pretty powerful words in there," he complimented with a smirk, a smirk that was so soft and gentle and adoring that you wanted to kiss him here on the spot.
"Thanks," you smiled.
"It almost sounded like... please don't take this the wrong way, like you knew what you were talking about."
"Being afraid of getting hurt for loving someone of the same gender," you wondered and he nodded. "Well... let's say it was pretty easy since the person I love sat right next to me."
Gerard's eyes widened for a moment as he realized the meaning of your words and he gasped for air.
"You, you are... you-" A smile brighter than any you had seen before spread over his face, lighting up the whole room.
"I'm gonna kiss you now, if that's okay," you told him, unable to keep your own grin under control.
When Gerard nodded furiously, you gently took his face into your hands and pressed your lips against his. They were soft, tasted a bit of Tabaco and coffee. Your heart was hammering in your chest and you were running out of breath faster than you liked. Your head was spinning and you hoped that holding onto Gerard's face was enough to keep you standing. When you pulled away, he chuckled slightly.
"Technically I was sitting on your left," he whispered into your ear.
Confused you turned your head to look at him, almost forgetting what you wanted to say as you met his beautiful, shining eyes.
"What?"
"You said 'the person you love sitting right next to you', but I sat on your left," he winked.
"Idiot," you giggled, gently nudging his shoulder, "you know what I mean."
"Yeah, yeah I do," Gerard agreed, sounding incredibly pleased knowing that his feelings were being returned.
In that moment the bell rang and you heard chairs being moved around on the floor, and chatter growing louder behind the still closed doors.
Warm, soft fingers intertwined with yours, making your heart flutter.
"Shall we," Gerard asked.
You leant forward, pressing your lips against his again quickly before the first doors flung open and revealed you to the rest of the students.
"Yeah, let's show 'em how it's done."