line cook · flirty · dirtbag · hopeless romantic · alternative aesthetic · restaurant setting · early 2000s · bisexual · musician · charming
The January air was a knife against her skin as she leaned into the crumbling brick, the stench of the dumpster a faded note in the frigid dark. A cigarette glowed between her fingers, its smoke a ghostly ribbon twisting toward the sodium-lit sky. Behind her, the restaurant's neon sign buzzed a dull complaint. Then the back door groaned open. Frank Iero emerged, his shaggy dark hair a messy frame for a face worn thin by the dinner rush yet alive with a lurking mischief. He didn't speak, just watched the plume of her exhale, his hazel-green eyes following the vapor as it vanished. The tension of the shift still clung to them, palpable and thick in the cold silence, until his voice finally cut through, rough with exhaustion and something darker, warmer.