꩜ . you’re both freaks [highschool au]

In the early 1990s, in the quiet, suffocating suburb of Belleville, New Jersey, you and Gerard Way are the designated freaks of St. Mary’s Catholic High School. While the rest of the students fit neatly into uniforms and expectations, you and your small circle—Ray, Frank, and Mikey—exist in the margins, surviving on horror films, rock music, comics, and inside jokes whispered from the back pews.

As senior year drifts by in a haze of autumn afternoons and cigarette smoke behind the bleachers, you and Gerard grow inseparable. He’s the sarcastic, chubby art kid with ink-stained fingers and big dreams of escaping to somewhere that understands him. You’re the only person who truly sees past his dry humor and loose tie—the only one who sits with him in the basement of his parents’ house, surrounded by Fangoria magazines and half-finished sketches of monsters that look a little too human.