They were in love with him.

In love with him.

And his house.

His room.

The view from the window.

The sheets on the bed.

The pictures on the wall.

The look in his eyes.

The nonsense he muttered in his sleep.

The meaningless conversations they had.

The more meaningful ones too.

The crack in the wall from where he'd punched it.

The horrific floral shirt at the back of his wardrobe.

The way he was shorter.

The stupid jokes.

The excessive use of aftershave.

The late nights.

The early mornings.

The whole world, just as long as he was in it.

Kat really didn't get that soppy often; you could tell it was four in the morning, well, half four now. Kat had spent a good thirty minutes laid there in silence as they came to the realisation that they were indeed in love with their boyfriend: laid in his bed beside them, still asleep, because Pete never got up first, and Kat had the whole world to themself at this time of day.

And perhaps that wasn't such a good thing.

They didn't quite know what to do, quite know what to say, besides just lying there, watching Pete's eyelids flicker in his sleep: illuminated only by the moonlight which streamed in through the open window.

Pete always slept with the window open - something that initially unnerved Kat, but they lived in a relatively small, relatively crime free town that in fact mainly consisted of elderly people and families with children - the idea was that you got out as soon as you turned eighteen, but maybe came back to die here.

Kat had always thought that the cemetery up on the hill was awfully pretty, so maybe it wasn't such a bad place to die, but to live, not at all. Kat knew that more than most.

There was also the fact that Pete's bedroom was up two different sets of stairs, and that if anyone wanted to break in and murder them, they'd probably have to be Spiderman, and if Kat didn't mind getting murdered by anyone, it was probably Spiderman. Pete had, of course, also spewed some bullshit about Kat being here to protect him, which Kat had simply rolled their eyes at.

Pete could be awfully sweet sometimes. Emphasis on the awful.

They'd thought about what Pete had said his friend Lindsey had asked of: someone called Mikey and all of that, and how urgent Lindsey had insisted it be. Kat wasn't quite sure what to make of that - they just knew that they couldn't put up with someone calling them Mikey, like seriously just they just couldn't. That was one of the main reasons they skipped school sometimes, and then that they didn't really have friends there besides Gerard, Frank, and Pete; Pete, of course, couldn't acknowledge him there because he was still about seven thousand miles in the closet, which Kat understand, and didn't think too much of though, and Kat would honestly rather stab themself than sit and watch Gerard and Frank be all 'close'.

Kat hung out with the stoners, mainly because you smoked pot instead of making useful conversation, and they were people to skip class with. Kat wasn't an avid pot smoker, or drug user, or anything of that nature really, in fact, they'd never smoked pot outside of school at all, and it wasn't even peer pressure - just something to pass the time. It wasn't something they talked about, and that was good, because people didn't talk about them, and dear god, Kat wondered what would happen if Gerard found out.

Kat felt this odd obligation to be a good sibling and role-model for Gerard, despite the fact that Gerard was older than him. Of course, Gerard had Frank now, didn't he? So Kat didn't fucking matter at all.

They knew that wasn't true, but still, they had this awful habit of overthinking things on early mornings when they were the first one awake, and that was of course, most mornings.

They jumped a little, however, as they felt a kick to their side: movement in the bed beside them - Pete.

"Morning," Pete muttered, sitting up and forcing his eyes open, meeting Kat with a smile: used to Kat being up before him by now. "Hey, you know? I had this dream... really weird, but not weird at all, I just..." He shook his head, brushing his hair from his face.

"Tell me?" Kat offered, sitting up a little, and throwing their boyfriend a confused look.

Pete shrugged, "well, it's kinda embarrassing, but whatever," he paused, glancing across at the window, open, of course, briefly, before continuing, "we got married, and then your brother was there and he was like 'wow I'm surprised, I thought you guys were just one big secret', and everyone else kept saying things like that... and I don't know... it freaked me out, but then, we kind of are like that."

Kat nodded a little: their whole body seeming to be frozen in slow motion.

"I mean, my dad would... would kill me again... but... I think maybe someone should know. Because we're a thing, like aren't we? I mean I never came up with a dumb name, and I'm sorry, but we're-"

"I love you." Kat said before their common sense could really catch up to them.

Pete met them wide eyed: endeared, flattered, but a little taken aback - all perfectly expectable reactions.

"I... that's what I was thinking about before you were awake. I came to that conclusion. That I love you." Kat drew in breath, "didn't exactly intend to say it, but... I guess..."

"I love you too." Pete said after a moment.

"We could tell my brother." Kat said after another.

"We could." Pete said in the moment that followed.

"We could." Kat repeated.

And in the silence that followed, they stayed for a good ten minutes: the sounds of the ocean, the sounds of the world waking up outside.

And Kat had this odd feeling in their chest that it might somehow work out this time.

And the funny thing was that Pete had the very same one.

-

The concept of living was an odd one.

The dictionary definition stated that it simply referred to 'living, being alive, not dead', but even Gerard had figured out that there was more to it than that.

It was one he found himself hard to grasp.

But to put it simply, he knew a world, a life in which he was really living, he'd be excited for his best friend's birthday and not dreading it. He'd be happy for Frank, he'd be happy to go, he'd be excited to wake up in the morning, and not despise it.

Because, technically, Gerard was living. He was alive. He was not dead.

He was just awfully empty. Hollow, perhaps. Like there was nothing instead of him, like everything he'd once known was drifting out and away from him, gradually, but with no hope of it stopping, and then eventually there'd be nothing left at all.

And he was scared. Scared of that.

But scared of it never happening just as much.

Gerard didn't feel like he was living though.

He was stuck on the platform and life was a series of trains whizzing past his face all too fast, and he could never quite walk fast enough or gather the courage to get on - to go on a journey, to go anywhere, do anything.

And he stood there on this platform, day and night, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And through all this time, the longer he stayed there: watching, waiting, nervous, as other people: blurs, got on trains around him, but they all left - he was the only one who seemed to be stuck there.

However, with time, the trains became less frequent, perhaps once a day, perhaps once a week, and then perhaps never at all, and he knew that the end was him alone at the platform: run down, abandoned, no hope of anything else, and it was then that he'd move, make some conscious decision and step out onto the tracks, and then the trains would come again.

Or he could get on.

It wasn't easy. It would never be easy. Gerard wasn't stupid.

But there was this train in the form of Frank Iero and his birthday party and his smile and how he seemed to care and perhaps even understand, and this one train was so fucking reluctant to leave the platform, waiting for him even, but Gerard was just as reluctant to get on.

Gerard was perhaps just as reluctant to admit to himself that he'd just compared Frank to a train.

He'd never really considered getting hit by a train.

It didn't sound particularly fun: more painful than anything - Gerard was a fan of death, but not one of pain. He'd never cut himself or anything like that - he'd never really felt inclined to; he just let himself fade out of existence from time to time. He reckoned the point of things like that was to feel something in the hellish nothingness that was, well, depression, because that's what he was, depressed, not that he'd really admitted it, but he wanted to kill himself, he had plans to kill himself, he was going to kill himself. But in all that, he didn't want to feel anything at all.

He'd never even been to the train station. He didn't fancy it either.

But it was all besides the point, because that morning Gerard found himself sat awake not with thoughts of how he was going to kill himself but how he nearly had. Thoughts of last Thursday, thoughts of a bathtub, thoughts of pills, thoughts of Friday morning, moths, Frank, and a conversation he'd never know.

Part of Gerard wanted him to know now, though. Gerard distrusted that part of himself - it felt foreign, alien, and unnerved him to be quite honest.

He wondered what would have happened if he had killed himself last week.

He reckoned his mother never would have pulled herself together, and in consequence, that things would be bad for Kat, and that maybe people would cry, and he'd never have gotten to have gone to Frank's birthday, or even been invited.

He wondered what could happen if he didn't kill himself on November 1st, despite how uneasy the thought made him.

People would cry. He knew that now, but perhaps this was his one moment of selfish: thinking of himself and not of others, and just how disastrous that had to be.

He was glad he didn't kill himself last week.

And he didn't know how to feel about that, because all he'd ever wanted, and all he did indeed want was to be nothing more than a body at the bottom of the ocean, or a lake, perhaps, but things weren't shaping out to be as bad anymore, and he just didn't know how to feel about that.

Because he had to kill himself, eventually at least.

Perhaps he'd postpone it a few days, he just didn't know yet, and he didn't know how long, and quite honestly, the idea of a second date was not one he was particularly fond of, but honestly, he wanted to be there for Frank, he wanted to see Frank turn seventeen at least.

He wanted to spend time with Frank, more time with Frank.

Honestly, there was a part of him that wanted to tell Frank how he felt, but he knew that was unfair, that it was unnecessarily cruel to tell a boy he loved him and then kill himself, and he knew he couldn't stomach staying around for much longer, so that was how it had to be.

Gerard jumped a little as he heard the front door slam shut: something he hadn't expected considering that it was, fuck, six am, and that he had indeed been sat in one position for three hours thinking about the end of the world, or really the end of his world, in particular.

It was really the sound, the sound that came with the reminder of life and the rest of the world, that got Gerard to his feet, and brushing his hair away from his face as he made his way out of his bedroom and down the hallway, and then into the kitchen, glancing at the front door and the people stood before it.

Kat and Pete.

Who looked perhaps a little startled to see him.

Because Gerard knew about Pete, but he didn't know. It was complicated, and the majority of Gerard's knowledge was just things he'd inferred or picked up upon, but there they were, holding hands, at six in the morning.

"We're together." Kat said before they could really think better of themself.

Pete glanced at them: wide eyed, startled, and evidently having not expected such a thing to come, at least so soon and so bluntly.

"Like properly." Kat added a moment later, only then meeting their brother's eyes. "For real this time, and we went to tell people but not everyone but people, because we want it to work."

"Okay..." Gerard stuttered out, his tone very quiet and nervous, looking between the two as he attempted to stitch a picture of what had really been going on inside his head.

"Okay?" Kat asked, their eyes widening a little, because in their mind, this definitely warranted so much more than a fucking okay.

But Gerard didn't tend to say all that much.

And they knew that.

They knew that.

"Mmm..." Gerard nodded his head, "it's okay."

'Well... that's good, isn't it?" Pete added, glancing nervously between the two.

"Yeah..." Kat pushed the words out, honestly wishing Gerard had said more, wishing there'd been more to say, wishing even for a negative reaction, which they knew Gerard would never have, because Gerard was nothing but supportive and hated confrontation.

"Yeah, it's... cool..." Gerard brushed his hair away from his face, "I kind of... knew there was... something... with you two..." He trailed off again: nervous particularly in Pete's presence; he knew Pete was a good guy, but still, the lack of time they'd spent with one another still rendered Gerard a little nervous.

"Oh..." Kat added, tucking their hair behind their ears. "That's... that's..."

"I notice a lot." Gerard added, making their way over to the table and sitting down.

Pete and Kat shared a glance: a kind of what the fuck is he doing glance from Pete mainly, and one of leave him alone from Kat.

"I think.... I think you're good together," Gerard added after a moment: his gaze vacant, distant, making his lack of sleep blaringly obvious.

"Thanks?" Pete added, his tone awkward, and perhaps even unnerved by Gerard and the way he just existed: so detached from everything, like he was even entirely in his own little world, which was of course something Gerard strived for, but could never quite achieve.

"You're welcome." Gerard added with a sigh, glancing up at the ceiling light, "all the moths have gone away this time of year, haven't they?"

"Y-yeah... I..." Pete stuttered out, glancing at Kat for some help in 'communicating' with their brother.

Kat rolled their eyes: a little agitated by Pete, because Gerard wasn't anything incredibly extraordinary, a little odd, yes, but everyone was a little odd.

"Yeah, it's getting colder." Kat smiled, meeting their brother's gaze. "Do you like moths?"

Gerard shrugged, "I'm indifferent, they're just important... oddly important... I was they weren't but... I shouldn't wish for anything really... it's all just... just how it is and how it's going to be," he paused, "I'm indifferent."

Pete reckoned he'd never been more confused in his life.

He'd met Gerard before and he was certainly more than aware of him and who he was, but still, this time was different, even Kat felt that there was something different about Gerard that day, but they had indeed put it down to sleep deprivation; Kat had this horrible, or perhaps lifesaving habit of rationalising things just to save them stressing before they'd really thought it through.

It was however, then, that in the silence, as Kat's head raced to block everything out about Gerard and what this all could mean, and Gerard's head raced to block everything out about Kat and what they could think, and Pete's head raced to try and remember whether the geography homework was due for today or not, Mrs Way walked in: a little startled to see her children and some random emo kid stood in her kitchen at half six in the morning.

"Hello?" She called out, looking between the three with confusion. "What's this?"

"Hey mum..." Kat inhaled deeply, glancing at Pete and then back at their mum, "this.... this is... my boyfriend."

"Oh..." She trailed off, glancing at Gerard, "and where do you fall in all this?"

"I don't... I was just... awake..." Gerard trailed off, letting his hair fall into his face as he looked away.

"So... this is... okay?" Kat stuttered out: a little wide eyed and perhaps even struggling to accept it, because part of them had wanted an argument, a mess, a clusterfuck of emotions - really anything at all besides being accepted and silence and small smiles: nothing at all. Because this had been so much to them - this felt like the whole world and it was just an apple falling from a tree in everyone else's eyes.

"Of course it is, honey." She smiled, glancing past Kat at Pete, "and you're..?"

"Pete," he finished, blushing awkwardly, "I'm Pete. It's nice to meet you."

"Lovely to meet you too."

It was then that Gerard realised that he absolutely needed to get the fuck out of there before they started getting sentimental and people thought that maybe he should contribute to the conversation and just how lovely it was that everyone else was happy and doing fine.

Because he sure as hell wasn't.

And it sure as hell wasn't fair.

Much in the very same way that killing himself at age seventeen wasn't 'fair' on his family and friends.

-

hey pals !!!! i lov this so much this makes me so excited I'm expericineing death regauarllrly rn in a good way tbh though this fic is so good and like i wrote it so i would know. vote and comment pal love u pals