"What's going on, Gerard?" Frank reached for his hand as the two sat atop the cliff, watching bottle green waves fade into shades of cobalt and teal as they rolled off into the horizon.

Gerard said nothing, because the matters of what was going on was indeed rather broad, and indeed, in the world as a whole, there was a hell of a lot going on, but of course, Frank wasn't interested in the whole of the world, just Gerard and what was going on for him.

Gerard feared that Frank had figured it out: pieced it all together, or at least made a start in doing so, because then, what would and what could he do? Because if, if he saw November 2nd, he honestly didn't know what he'd do; he had this habit of planning for every day and working everything out weeks in advance, and November 2nd was a day he had not planned on seeing at all.

Frank cared for him, and it wasn't like Gerard didn't appreciate that or care for him back; he did, and that was what made this all so much harder to do, but it had to be done - it was simple, it was like the sun setting on the horizon one last time: one flash tangerine reflection upon the still dark ocean, because for Gerard, the end of a day, was the end of everything, and that was how it had to be.

Because he couldn't get better, because he didn't want to get better, and that was not something he voiced because he was well aware as to how absurd it sounded, but he just couldn't really explain it, but it was as it was, and he had indeed found himself rather attached to the bottom of his heart and the darkest corners of his mind.

And he could romanticise this sense of hell he found himself in all he fucking wanted, because if you were going to destroy yourself, you might as well make it worth the while, and if you were going to drain the blood from your body, you might as well paint a pretty picture. Not that Gerard was all so keen upon cutting himself, because blood had never been something he was good with, and he much prefered the spectrum of different coloured pills he kept in a drawer in his room.

A spectrum he'd shared with Kat, unintentionally, and this clifftop chat was a result of that, and a result of Kat giving up: not entirely, but to the degree where they finally came to comprehend that Gerard just wasn't going to listen to them, because they gave empty advice based on a lack of understanding, and they were doing little to rectify that.

Frank was little change; Frank just looked a little nice when he smiled at him, and Gerard's heart did this fluttery regretful thing when they made eye contact, because Gerard had known this all along, and he had to respect that his suicide date had come before he'd even known Frank, and logically, it was only fair that way, surely?

Or maybe he'd just gotten too good at making excuses to himself; he'd had a hell of a lot of time - all he'd had was time and nights alone and empty stares, and the ability to name every shade of blue in the sky.

"Navy to indigo." Gerard said, pointing to the darkest point where the sky met the sea.

Frank looked confused momentarily, before realising that Gerard had vocalised some part of a conversation in his head; he tried his best to make sense of it, as he always did, but he couldn't quite manage it, again, as he always did.

"The sky." Gerard continued, turning to Frank with a sad look in his eyes, "the colours are beautiful and dark, and powerful: they're overcast and hold power over the town, and we are here little silhouettes atop a cliff face and we could fade right out into nothingness and it wouldn't matter at all, because there's so much more, there's so much more than me, there's so much more than us. What's going on? What's going on in the world? So much. Everything. The entire world is going on: there is rain, there are storms, there's the sun, there's snow, there's anger, there's hatred, there's kindness, and there's love, and in all that, you're focusing in on me and my mind. I am so small, and so insignificant."

Frank paused for a moment, not having expected such a profound speech from Gerard, but he could never anticipate half the things that left the boy's lips and that was exactly what made him as he was. "You're not insignificant to me." He added with a small, hopeful smile.

"Look at the sky." Gerard told him, brushing off his response, "look at all those colours: that sky holds more in this one moment than I ever could in a lifetime."

"And why are you saying that?" Frank asked, failing in keeping his voice calm this time, "how could you say that? How could you say that? You'd never know, and you- all this Gerard, I just can't- I just... please, please..." Frank broke down a little, leaving Gerard to glance between him and the sky with confusion.

He gave his hand an awkward yet comforting squeeze. "You can."

"I can what?" Frank laughed at him in disbelief.

"Whatever you say you can't." Gerard leaned back against the grass. "I have this kind of astounding faith in you. I think you're a beautiful person, Frank."

Frank felt a knot forming in his throat, "you're beautiful too, Gerard."

Gerard smiled, feeling every time Frank had said those words to him coming right back, "that doesn't mean anything to me. To you it does, and thank you, but for me, it's just... just very little. What do you think's going on with me?"

"I think-" Frank swallowed, unable to get the words out, "I think you're- you're trying to kill yourself."

Gerard offered him a small apologetic smile, before sitting up, "no."

"No?" Frank exclaimed, his eyes widening in a mix between shock and relief.

"No." Gerard reassured him.

"But the pills and those letters and-"

"I'm not trying to kill myself." Gerard repeated: his words firm and his tone oddly dictating, and Frank was so ready to listen because this was exactly what he wanted to hear, and Gerard's voice was so stern and so certain.

"Do you mean that?" Frank had to ask.

Gerard nodded, "I do. I'm not trying to kill myself."

Frank let out a sigh of relief, leaning into Gerard's side, trusting in him and that everything was going to be okay.

But Gerard held the truth, the truth part two, so to speak, because the fact that he wasn't trying to kill himself hadn't been a lie, it just wasn't the whole truth, because he wasn't trying to kill himself.

He was going to.

"Then what is it?" Frank asked in the continued silence, eyes fixed upon the ocean and then back on Gerard again, because he was truly beautiful, but so obviously hurt, and perhaps even hurting himself, and dragging himself down into a kind of hell that Frank couldn't hope to retrieve him from, but still, Frank found himself trying because there was nothing else to do.

He couldn't just let Gerard ruin himself like this.

Even as he insisted that he and everything was okay, because it really wasn't, and Frank had perhaps always known that, but had never found himself happy to admit such a thing, because he had always been so intoxicated with the idea of Gerard being fine and Gerard being the picture perfect poster boy for humanity that he'd set him up to be.

In a matter of minutes, Frank found himself certain of it - certain that there was something more: certain that there had always been something more, certain that his great talent lay in none other than his ignorance, and certain that the past month had served as nothing but proof for the aforementioned.

Surely, Gerard hadn't lied to him though, because his voice had held such certainty, and Gerard didn't tend to lie, because Gerard had never outrightly lied to him; the two had just danced awkwardly around the two, and it was just as much Frank's fault as it was Gerard's - they had always been both to blame, because they were going down, and they were going down, hand in hand, because if Gerard thought for a single moment that he could kill himself and that Frank would be okay in the end, he was severely mistaken.

Going through it in his mind, Frank was so sure of it all, yet sure of nothing else, because Gerard was in the worst place: one in which he never tended to speak much, and avoided the blunt truth like it might hurt him, and perhaps it did - perhaps this all hurt him, and perhaps that was why he was so intent upon burning himself out.

Once, before, at the start of all of this, he'd thought he'd figured Gerard out, but now it was evident that he didn't know him at all, and that the version of Gerard that had come under glistening golden light: under the rays of beauty and perfection, was a distorted reflection through several mirrors and glanced at through tainted spectacles, because Gerard was tearing and shattered in all places; he was decaying, ruining himself, and quickly becoming nothing, and the realisation of it all was a harsh punch to the face.

Inevitably, he found himself coming to conclude that Gerard was spiralling out of control, and in turn, that there was so little he could do to rectify that, because Gerard was so far gone, and so far caught up in himself and the demons of his own mind, and the drawer of pills that lay ignored, and whatever else he could possibly hide up there in his head - things that Frank didn't dare imagine but found himself forced to ask for.

Never before had he really held the aforementioned with such certainty, but now it was obvious, so blindingly fucking obvious now, and he'd been so fucking ignorant, and he found himself hating himself for it, because what else was there to do as the two sat in a continued silence as Gerard found himself unable to trust Frank with anything at all truthful, because Frank needed something, anything, in the form of answers, but he found himself with nothing but the silence and the calm of the waves upon the ocean, and the cold breeze of October fading away around them.

Gerard had always been like this, Frank had just failed to notice, and in essence, he'd failed him, and he'd failed Kat, because here he was: the one person Gerard had trusted above all - his fucking boyfriend, and here he was, failing to get anything out of him, because it seemed that what trust they had between them didn't count when it mattered, and that hurt.

Truthfully, Frank had perhaps prevented himself from noticing: forced the possibility from his mind, and truthfully that was so much his fault that it hurt, but truthfully, he couldn't help but forgive himself for it, because he'd been so in love, and so caught up in the image of who he wanted Gerard to be, that he couldn't escape it, and truthfully, he was still so in love, and still so ensnared in that world view.

Only such love and admiration for a person could do that to you, and Frank hated it, because he couldn't ever consider hating Gerard, who had been so beautiful and so lovely and so hurt, and yet had hid this all from him and everyone, and ruined his life, and refused to say a word for himself, and fuck, Frank wanted to hate him, because although it would accomplish so very little, Frank felt like it was much more of a natural human reaction than just sitting feeling sorry for himself in a pathetic kind of silence.

Daring, in fact, to consider and encourage the possibility that Gerard might have been fine was ridiculous, and he had done so; he'd done so extravagantly - he'd overdone it, he'd made a show out of it, he'd made it everything; he'd constructed this entire world out of fakery, and now found himself startled and panicked as it began to tumble down around him.

In time, he'd come to know it, but before he'd found himself so blinded by optimism and hope: so blinded by the ever present wish for Gerard to be okay, because in all truth, he'd known a little from their first meeting that there had been something off about Gerard, and he'd watched, as he grew closer to him, how that little thing that grown and mutated into something controlling and terrible, and Frank had said nothing, because in time, he'd found himself brushing it over: accustomed to it.

Essentially, he'd blocked out everything that would have alluded to the truth and helped him in helping Gerard, and essentially, he sat here in pathetic silence, blaming himself for what had happened instead of doing something to fix what little he could.

"What's going on?" He pleaded for a second time, reaching for Gerard's hand without asking, which was already a mistake, and he knew that, because he did know Gerard, but part of him just wanted any alternative to the cruel silence that blanketed them. "What is it if you're not trying to kill yourself? You're not in a good state, Gerard, fuck, please, let me help you, let me, please, just say something."

"I'm depressed, or something," Gerard said: offhand, casually, "everything seems so fucking pointless: washed out and grey." He glanced at the very blue sea. "I'm depressed, but you can't help me with that, because it what's inside my head: it's internal, and you're... you're external."

And there was something in those few words that cut right through Frank and slit his heart in two.

It's internal, and you're external.

That was Gerard telling him to go fuck himself in the most polite and poetic of ways, and Frank was indeed, perpetually, nothing but dumbfounded, because what could he do? Go and tell Kat that there was nothing they could do.

Because there had to be something.

Surely?

-

"It's not your fault." Kat told him with a sigh, leading Frank into their house, which was empty besides the two of them - Kat's mother being out shopping, and Gerard, being out somewhere, which was worrying the both of them, because the two had been doing little other than worrying about Gerard for the past few days.

"It's just Gerard..." Kat continued, leading Frank into the kitchen and letting out a sigh as they glanced down the hallway to their brother's bedroom. "Do you have any idea where he is now?"

Frank shook his head, "I asked him if he wanted to come back to mine earlier today and he said he was going to go home."

"And it doesn't take even him four hours to walk down three streets." Kat let out a sigh, "something's really wrong."

"All I got out of him is that he's not trying to kill himself, which is good, but then again, it doesn't ensure that the truth is going to be better." Frank brushed his hair out of his face, "and he's not been sleeping well, and he's really not in a good state of mind, and I just feel like there's nothing we can do about him, but we have to do something about him."

"He's only going to freak out if I tell mum or something - he'd probably run away from home or something. He's not good at talking to people and he's even worse at reacting rationally." Kat glanced back down the hallway; they'd suggested showing Frank the drawer in Gerard's bedroom, and seeing if Frank could figure anything out from the rest of the mess in their, because although going through Gerard's stuff was morally wrong, Kat would rather have a little bad karma than let their brother ruin his life in whatever way he was planning to.

Frank nodded, "it's not his fault. He's just... I don't know, he's just... he's unlike anyone I've met ever and I really struggle to relate to him or understand, but still, I feel so close to him, and I don't know why that is, and I just can't stomach the thought of him ruining himself or hating himself or whatever the fuck he could possibly- fuck..." He trailed off, "we can't keep stalling, can we? I have to look."

"You don't want to, do you?" Kat stated the obvious.

Frank grimaced: looking at it would make it real - not that he doubted Kat at all, but he was ever so good at brushing things off in his mind - in fact, he did so automatically at times: as a coping methods of sorts.

"Come on." Frank bit his lip, making his way down the hallway to Gerard's bedroom: having been in his house enough times to know where it was. Kat followed a few paces behind: holding their breath, because they didn't' want to look again, and they highly suspected that Frank might cry, and they honestly didn't know how to deal with that.

Kat closed the door behind the older boy and waited at the corner of the room as he made his way over to the chest of drawers and pulled them open: revealing random junk until the drawer full of pills came into view.

"Fuck- fuck, fuck, this is... this is..." Frank turned away, biting his lip, "this is worse than I could have imagined."

"I thought he would have gotten rid of them." Kat said after a moment.

"We already know - what's the point?" Frank asked, trying desperately not to cry.

Kat shrugged, "I don't know. i don't ever know with Gerard. No one does."

"I wish he would just, you know, talk to someone, ever." Frank cursed, leaning back against the wall, only to catch sight of something on the desk: a note, scribbled in black ink - handwriting rushed and uneven, as if there was no style or structure to it all:

An Apology.

It didn't rain and I made you worry. I am sorry.

I didn't take a bath when you told me to. I am sorry.

I didn't take my pills for months. I am sorry.

You might not see me again. I am sorry.

I have to leave home. I am sorry.

I told you I loved you and I didn't mean it. I am sorry.

I let you hurt more than you needed to. I am sorry.

I made you think I was beautiful. I am sorry.

It's not going to rain until November 10th.

But you won't have to tell me to take a bath this time.

You won't have to worry at all.

I'm so sorry.

-

theres a thing if u notice the thing message me no its not a spelling mistake if u notice spelling mistakes u can comment and i can have a great time not giving one single fuck but there is a thing. anyway vote and comment if u'd like to love u guys