!Gerard Way

[Current]

The first time that Gerard spoke to Frank after he came home from talking to Mr. Robert Downey Jr. the relief had been almost palpable in his voice, his excitement about having at least the prospect of controlling his power, of having someone who wasn't shocked by it at all, but rather immediately sought to do something with it. It had been wonderful to see Frank that free, his voice easy and excited for once at the prospect of his power, of being different, but at the same time, Gerard had felt a little... Jealous, maybe. Perhaps just envious, that someone could give Frank that kind of peace.

He'd been tempted to go the roundabout way, talking to America-who-sometimes-hangs-at-Bob's and wheedling an appointment like Frank had done, but finally he decided to just go for it, sick of having to rely on his friends to mediate the entire fucking world for him. It's not as if this guy isn't used to dealing with people who are big-D Different, right? So even a freak like Gerard shouldn't be too big of a surprise. He hopes.

He starts to lose his courage when he's halfway to the building that a quick internet search confirms as Robert's office, but he's not going to turn around, so instead he just straightens his tie and runs his fingers back through his hair before walking into the front lobby and asking, as confidently as he can, "I'd like to speak to America Ferrera, please. I need to make an appointment to see Mr. Downey."

The security/receptionist, a deceptively small looking guy by the name of Pepper (Yeah, he hates it too) looks up from his monitor under the reception desk and his face stays studiously blank as he presses a series of keystrokes that do five things at once: 1) activate the infrared security camera in addition to the already-five cameras that are focused where the visitor stands, 2) Instigates the metal detector that scans up his body from the floor, 3) Starts the biomass scanner that runs from the same spot, 4) beams all this information to Robert's monitor, and 5) last but not least, opens the visitor's log. His empty smile perhaps tells the visitor that people don't just walk off the street and get an appointment with Robert Downey Jr. "Your name, please? Business? And I'll need a picture ID."

"No, no, no, no. Seriously?" Robert's leaned back in his chair, a foot on his desk. "Seriously. You expect me to pay $45 a share for that. And you've lost your fucking mind. Call me back when it's 28. You think I'm joking? Try me. This is my serious face, trust me." Turning off his speaker phone, he turns to the small picture in the corner of his monitor as the readings begin to come in. No weapons, no, well, nothing. "Who are you?" He asks, idly, to the computer screen.

Gerard fishes for his wallet on his back pocket, not even noticing Pepper's moment of hesitation before he comes out with the battered leather square with a battered and faded Captain America shield on one side. He picks his ID out of it and puts it meekly on the granite countertop, sensing that it would probably be a bad idea to reach across it to hand it to the man directly. "I'm Gerard Way, a friend of Frank's. He was in to talk to Mr. Downey Jr. last week. He said- He said that Mr. Downey Jr. could, um. Help."

He cuts his eyes away, from the plastic rectangle of his ID on the counter to the side, towards the wall and (unbeknownst to him), one of the closed cameras. It catches a fantastic shot of his eyes, pupils dilating from bare slits to nearly rectangles as he takes a deep breath in and shifts his weight, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he waits and tries desperately hard not to fidget. He doesn't know that he's being observed so closely - the infrared scanners picking up that his body temperature is an easy seven degrees below normal, the biomass detector returning readings that should be for a much bigger man than he is - but even just having one person looking at him steadily is enough to make him want to run and hide. "If he- If there's no way I can schedule an appointment, I'll just talk- I'll talk to America the next time I see her."

"Well, shit," Robert mutters, leaning in, waiting to be sure, but when the ID is scanned, it tells him it's Gerard Way, who of course, is the man Frank mentioned who was a Naga. As if the eyes weren't a dead giveaway. He hits 8 on his phone, which goes right to Pepper's headset. "Send him up."

Blinking again, the only sign of his surprise, Pepper slides the ID back across the counter and gestures to Tony, who comes over, beefy arms crossed across his chest. Then he looks up at Gerard. "You'll be taken up now."

Tony stands aside, one arm gesturing toward the elevators, which Pepper will open when they get there.

Gerard tries not to cower, which is only half successful since he's long since mastered the art of hunching over to make himself seem as small and unobtrusive as possible. He peeks at the guy - he's some kind of guard, right? He must be - through the fall of his bangs as he waits for the elevator to stop, keeping his eyes on the floor rather than risk raising them to the numbers that steadily tick by.

Tony hits the code that allows the doors to open, which they do, into Robert's workspace. Clean stainless steel, everywhere, all things bolted down and secured, fluorescent lights cool overhead. "He'll be right here. Make yourself comfortable." His version of a joke. There's no place to sit. Urging Gerard out, Tony takes his place against the wall, the elevator staying open, arms crossed across his chest.

When the door finally pings open he waits for the other man to gesture for him to move before he goes, keeping his head down and his arms tucked close across his chest as if to make sure he doesn't touch anything he shouldn't. God only knows he doesn't want to piss anybody off now, when it seems like he's in some sort of secret laboratory, or some shit. It's closer to things that he's seen in comic books than anything he's ever experienced in real life, and that's sort of a sobering thought to have as he waits for this guy - he doesn't even really know what he looks like, he realizes with a shock - to show up. He just nods meekly to the guy and doesn't look around, his normal pace of breathing too slow for his shallow breaths to give away his nervousness.

After telling America where he was going and why, Robert all but skips down the steps -- it's a good day-- to his workspace and stops at the foot of the stairs, easily taking in everything. If Gerard's a Naga, he could be very, very strong, so he doesn't signal for Tony to leave just yet. But the poor kid looks terrified (not that Robert isn't used to people looking that way around him, but still). "Hello," he says, from where he stands, hands in his pockets, looking, for all the world, casual and relaxed. Except for his gaze, eyes slightly narrowed as he takes Gerard in. "I'm Robert."

"Gerard," Gerard mumbles, biting lightly at the inside of his cheek with too-sharp teeth as he looks up through his hair at Robert, his eyebrows quirked together and his eyes wide, his mouth tucked into a tiny little moue. He rocks back on his heels, just the slightest bit, and twitches his nose slightly, a nervous little habit, before saying, awkward and almost desperate to dispel some of the tension that makes his shoulders feel like rocks, "You know Frank, right? He said- He said you did. Um."

"I know Frank. He turned the floor where you're standing into granite. Pity was that it only stayed that way for a few hours." Geez, the kid is a nervous wreck. Robert flicks his gaze to Tony and the elevator; dismissing him. "You're Frank's very good friend, Gerard. Who's a Naga and whose body temperature is a cool and breezy 91.2. Would you like something to drink?" He walks to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water, offering it up.

As soon as Tony leaves Gerard relaxes markedly, finally venturing to look at Robert properly, rather than the furtive glancing that he's done so far. He's not afraid of him, at least not in the usual way that Gerard is afraid of everyone, because Robert already knows. Gerard isn't exactly sure how he feels about that, precisely, because it wasn't his decision to tell, but it seems to have worked out okay, so it's alright, right? He shakes his head, flapping a long fingered hand at the bottle of water, and shifts from foot to foot again before saying, with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, "Granite, was it? I'd never been granite before, so I couldn't have told you what it was he turned me into."

"That's right, you were turned. For twenty minutes, was it?" Cocking his head, Robert hops onto a table to sit, gesturing for Gerard to do the same. "How did that feel to be turned to stone? In fact, how does it feel to be you?" He doesn't apologize for asking, figuring Gerard wouldn't be here if he didn't want to be asked questions.

Gerard doesn't hesitate for more than a moment before he hops up onto a table across from Robert, his inexpertly shined dress shoes scuffed across the toes as he crosses his legs tailor fashion and rests his elbows against his knees. He wrinkles his nose again, one hand reaching up to rub at it with the back of his fingers, and shrugs one-shouldered as he mutters quietly, his voice soft and so-slightly sibilant in the quiet of the room. "dunno what it felt like, I'm pretty sure I was stone at the time."

He grins, the surprising, sudden breadth of his smile revealing the suggestion of sharp, hooking teeth and open spaces at the edges, and spreads his hands out in front of himself, his long fingers spidery and surprisingly graceful as he completes his shrug from before with a little bit of satisfaction. "An' it feels like bein' me, I guess. Don't really have much to compare it to, do I?"

"No, I don't imagine you do. Why do you live in Chicago if you're cold-blooded? Winter must seriously suck to be you. Do you shed?" All the while, Robert's watching, taking it in, the teeth, the eyes (which are quite stunning). "What do you eat?"

"Living in Jersey wasn't exactly a walk in the park either, you know." Gerard maybe doesn't want to examine his reasons for having hared off to Chicago too closely, when he and Frank are still... Him and Frank, frustrating and confusing and ill-defined. He crosses his arms somewhere between his wrists and elbows, his hands hanging relaxed over the metal tabletop, and he watches Robert thoughtfully for a moment before he repeats his smooth, almost sinuous one-shouldered shrug. "Winter sucked a whole lot this year, but I didn't, like, die. So I'll get over it. And I don't, I just get really itchy when the weather's dry."

Robert's other question breeds a funny response, an embarrassed twist of his mouth that has his nose crunching up and his eyes squinting just the slightest bit, as he reaches up to push his dark hair back away from his face, his hand shielding the downward turn of his eyes as he mutters. "And- Rats. I know it's weird, but..."

"But you're a snake. So." Is that supposed to bother Robert? Why should it? At Gerard's response, he smiles a little. "Why are you here, Gerard?" He asks, quietly, his own hands laced loosely between his legs, feet swinging.

Gerard is quiet for a moment, his nose twitching a little as he thinks, and when he finally looks up at Robert, his fingers tucking his hair fastidiously behind his ear, his gaze is level, thoroughly inscrutable, even as he's rolling his jaw and biting gently at the edge of his lower lip with his teeth. "I want-"

He falters a little, looking down again before he can collect himself, kick his feet down off the table to lean forward, doing his damnedest to pin Robert with his stare as he licks his lips and continues, as certain as he's capable of sounding. "I want you to do what you did for Frank. I want- I want to know that I'm not some kind of freak." The look on Gerard's face is resigned, all stubborn set to his full mouth and tension at the corners of his deep set eyes, the tip of his chin challenging.

"You are a freak," Robert replies, meeting his gaze steadily, unblinking. "So is Frank, America. So am I. If you want to be normal, Gerard, it's not going to happen, I have a hunch, though I'd love to see what your bloodwork is like. I can't heal you. And I can't help you control what you have like I am Frank." And there comes the pause as Robert thinks.

"What I can do, if you want, is help you to mask it? But what's the point in that? You are what you are. Are you ashamed of what you are?"

"What, you mean like the contacts my Mom made me wear at school? They itch. And they gave me pink eye." Gerard knows perfectly well that no human - no normal human, whatever - can beat him staring, so he doesn't even try, closing his eyes as he turns his head away, his mouth a tense line as he inhales, exhales, and says quietly, his voice a low, dreadfully even whisper. "I want to be able to walk down a street and not worry if people are going to really see me. Be able to laugh, or smile, without being afraid. But that's not going to happen, I get that. I've had- I've had fucking long enough to get used to it, haven't I?"

His laugh is small, awful, and when he turns his face back to Robert's the look in his strange not-quite-catlike, predatory eyes is sad and far, far older than his pretty, boyish face. He smiles, close-mouthed, and it's nearly a sneer. "Even with all the rest of you freaks I'm still a freak, right? I just wish- I just wish that I could do something with that."

"Do something? Like what? Turn things to stone? Make lightning? That kind of thing? I am very sure there is something you can do with what you are. And, at the risk of sounding like a high school guidance counselor, Gerard, if they stare? It's because there's something to see. No contacts, okay, fine. But," Robert sighs, muttering to himself, "I can't even believe I'm saying this." And then he goes on. "It's attitude. You skulked in here, why? You have nothing to be ashamed of, so don't be ashamed. I might not've even noticed anything if you hadn't been trying so hard to disappear into the floor."

"And when I wake up with a bruise on my ass from the tranq dart and a very sturdy cage around me, am I supposed to be ashamed or just pissed that I'll be too busy being tested on for the rest of my very truncated life to watch this week's So You Think You Can Dance? I skulked, as you so pleasantly put it, because I've spent most of my life hoping that the guy I'm trying to sell a book to wouldn't notice that my jaw pops loose every time I yawn, that I've got teeth to give a dentist nightmares and a herpetologist wet dreams, and fucking fantasy novel eyes." Gerard drags in a shallow, hissing breath, too angry to realize that he's talked more than he does some weeks, pale pink spots of rage blooming in his cheeks as he leans forward, his fingers flexing as he grips the edge of the table and continues. "Think about it. When you get sick, do you, I don't know, get your private physician to swoop in and fix you up in between board meetings, or do you ignore it as best you can and hope to God you get better, because a trip to the ER would probably end up with you spending the rest of your life in a very nice observation room in some research facility? When you can't say it's the first one, then you can tell me that I skulk."

"Your life sucks. I get it," Robert answers, a small smile on his face. "Aren't you afraid that I'm going to be the one to put you in the cage? You fascinate me, why not? No one would ever know what happened to you, because you'd disappear, except I'd imagine I'd get barraged with emails from your friend Frank who, even when typing, talks too much." He cocks his head to the other side. "I have a private physician and I do take my life for granted. Score two for you. But if you came here just so I could tell you you weren't a freak, you're going to be disappointed, Mr. Way. I'm not sure how I can help you, or, frankly, if I want to. Besides, So You Think You Can Dance is a terrible show and you're not missing out on a thing."

Gerard raises an eyebrow, his shoulders tensing slightly as he leans forward and tips his head ever-so-slightly to the side. "Do you really want to find out how long Frank can turn something to stone for? 'cause if I disappeared, just a hunch, you'd probably find out whether you wanted to or not." The smile that Gerard ekes out for Robert isn't nice at all, thin and joyless, and his hand comes up again to let him trace over the soft of his hair, for all that it hasn't moved since he last did it, as he says softly, watching Robert's face with no readable emotion on his own. "I know you can't fix me, like you're doing for Frank. There's nothing to fix. But what the fuck, seriously, you know? I figure maybe you want to take pictures, or do- Do bloodwork, or whatever. I probably won't go missing after, because when push comes to shove, you're a freak too. And you're a freak who likes to know how things work. So figure out how I work, yeah?"

For a long time, Robert doesn't move. He might be intimidated, except that he's not. He might be angry, and he is, a little, something about someone coming into his workplace and being a prick about it. Though Gerard is right on one point; Robert is curious about how Gerard works. "You're contradicting yourself," he finally says, slowly, steadily. "You are afraid of being taken and tested, but you offer yourself up. What I'm doing with Frank is helping him to control it. I can't do that with you, because, as you so eloquently put it, there's nothing to control. You don't want to mask it, but you hate being stared at. If you want me to run tests on you, I will: skin samples, bloodwork, x-rays, stress tests and all that. But, if that is the case, I need you to be very clear about one thing, Mr. Way." At this, he hops off the table, leaning back against it, arms folded across his chest.

"I don't need the attitude. I really don't. You don't have to like me and frankly, I don't care if you do. I have friends. I'm not about philanthropy, unless I get something out of it. You probably know that. I'm not Oprah and I don't want to be. Am I being clear?"

It takes a long moment of incredulous staring before Gerard can master the urge to laugh at Robert accusing him of having an attitude, but finally he masters the urge and just coughs instead, his nose wrinkling slightly as he twists his mouth, lopsided like all of his expressions, and says with a bit of a wry quality to his voice, "I don't like people getting in my way. It's not like people usually do catch and release programs when it comes to testing, you know? They're never happy until they know exactly what size your lungs are and how much your liver weighs and what shape the inside of your skull is. Which is kind of hard to find out when you're alive, you know? I figure you can, like, master that urge, or whatever. I'm not afraid of tests, I'm afraid of losing my entire fuckin' life, whatever there is of it and however shitty you might think it is, just because I'm a freak."

He lets his feet swing him off the table as well, and when he squares his shoulders he meets Robert's eyes levelly, his hands still on the edge of the table behind him and his elbows hyperextended under his neat dress shirt. "I don't want fucking charity, and if I thought you'd offer it, I wouldn't have fucking come, yeah? I want to be useful. Me, not some boring, normal person I pretend to be badly. Me. And I guess, I dunno. I figure if anyone can find a use for me, it'd probably be you."

Of all of that, the last bit is what brings Robert's attention back. "You're offering me a deal?" He asks, and for a moment, he thinks he's going to laugh, but that is gone quickly. "Because you can be of use." And interestingly enough, Robert can see that. But that doesn't means he likes Gerard, because, well, he's not very likable. And from Robert, that's saying a lot. "I test you and find out how you work and in exchange, provide you with an opportunity to ... be yourself? Am I understanding you correctly?"

"Yes. You're understanding me just fine." Gerard's still wound up tight enough that his esses have a breathy sibilance to them that he doesn't so much hear as feel. It makes him wrinkle his nose a little, his mouth twisting with irritation, largely at himself, as he takes a step forward and holds out a hand, not necessarily expecting for it to work but willing to give it a try anyway. "You get to poke around until you've figured me out to your satisfaction, and I get to, dunno. Not worry about always looking at the ground for a while. Seems like a fair enough trade to me."

And it does, actually. Robert takes another look over Gerard, from head to toe. He wonders, vaguely, how, suddenly, he's become a stopping point on the trek toward... whatever. Maybe he'll ask America. Or Billy. Slowly, he takes Gerard's hand and shakes it. "Tomorrow. Here. We'll test you here. For what it's worth."

Gerard's careful to keep his grip firm as he shakes Robert's hand, holding his eyes steadily before he lets his hand drop and finds a crooked, almost believable smile to pull at the corners of his mouth. He makes a point not to look down, away, as he licks the corner of his mouth, only grimacing the slightest bit as his secondary, forked tongue flicks out to taste the air, relaying steel-scrubbed air-antiseptic-cologne to his brain. "What time? I assume you've probably got better things to do with your time than getting me to step on a scale or say 'Ahh', but you look like the kind of guy who like schedules for everything anyway. It's not like I have anywhere better to be."

"8:00 am. We'll have a medical team here." Letting go of Gerard's hand and its carefully controlled grip, Robert stuffs his hands in his pockets. "What kind of rats do you eat?"

"The usual kind?" A flicker of confusion crosses Gerard's face before he hides it again, biting the inside of his lower lip as he shrugs and tucks his thumbs into the pockets of his dress pants, not at all used to wearing so few layers, with such a lack of things to fiddle with as he talks. "When I lived in Jersey I kept my own, but I've found a decent enough pet shop here that suits me well enough. All their snakes are happy, and I've never had problems. I'm pretty fuckin' useless for anything else for six or seven hours after I've eaten, though. I can't really think and digest at the same time."

Now, that's funny. Robert snickers. "I'll have food for you here because I want to see how you digest." And at that, he nods. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Way. Tell Frank I said hello."

Gerard nods back, grinning crookedly as he ducks his head. "Just make sure I've got a bed or a couch, for after, or I'll probably bite someone. I get testy when I'm sleepy." He lifts his hand, sketching a little wave in Robert's direction, and walks back over to where the elevator is, figuring that someone who isn't him will make it operate when he's supposed to go back down. "See you tomorrow."

The doors swish open and Robert grins. "Hold on to something on your way down, Mr. Way." As he watches the doors close, he starts toward the stairs where he'll have America make arrangements for the Naga who'll be essentially living here tomorrow. His life? Yeah, it's become kind of strange. But at least he won't be bored. That's something.