I never even thought about school, and I never even thought about the people and the stares that would follow. Everyone thought they knew what was going on, but know one really knew - perhaps not even Mikey, not anymore - he'd already passed off his injury with something about falling out of a tree and some stupid dare that was embarrassing enough to ensure people took it as gospel.

And that had worked for him; that had all worked perfectly fine and dandy, but luck was certainly not on my side, and there was no confirmation of such a fact like the one you received with thirty sets off eyes and whispers that you caught too much of, passed around the room - rumours and gossip, all among the shock on the faces of the people who didn't quite believe that I was actually back, and were stupid enough to believe that one guy that started a rumour I got hit by a truck and died as a result, and then apparently got reincarnated as someone's cat.

And to top it all off, the black eye that Gerard had given me wasn't exactly helping matters.

And of course, really, the teachers had been staring and assuming more than the majority of the student body had been, and the only godsend of this day so far was Skully's absence and the torture I was saved from for the next 'blissful' twenty four hours.

It was certainly weird to think that at one point my life seemed to revolve around the guy and the way he taunted and beat up me, and perhaps my only saving grace in life was the elusive guy with the fiery red hair, and perhaps he was, perhaps he had been after all, but then again, the black eye was a constant reminder of reality: pulling me back down to earth like the pop of a balloon whenever I caught my own reflection or someone was simply kind enough to point it out.

To think I hadn't noticed the massive swelling bruise across my own face was just a little ridiculous, then again, I had been blessed with forgetting the absolute blatant ignorance and stupidity with which pupils here almost seemed to come with the obligation of having.

"Frank?" I jumped at the voice - breaking the silence that the gazes brought, and turned to see Mr Toro turning up, eyes almost dropping from his sockets at my sudden appearance, and I felt overcome with a wave of guilt as I remembered that I'd made no contact with the poor overwhelmed, curly haired music teacher for several weeks now.

"Mr Toro." I nodded, almost as if I was confirming my presence, ignoring the gazes of the rest of the class - most of which who had turned away the moment Mr Toro had showed up.

"Come talk to me after class." He met my gaze with sincerity that translated as 'you're going to tell me what the hell is going on, Frank Iero, because I'm driving myself crazy here', and I let out a reluctant nod as he gestured to the only spare seat beside a kid with bleach blonde hair that I wasn't quite sure I recognised. "Sit down there."

And as I did sit down, I go the shock of my life. "Pete?" I exclaimed, my voice a hushed whisper as I caught the gaze of the bleach blonde haired boy beside me, who I couldn't quite get myself to truly believe was none other than Pete Wentz himself. "Your hair..."

"I dyed it." He exhaled in a tone that told me instantly that this was a question he was more than tired of answering by now. "Hair does exist, Frank, or did you forget that when you were busy travelling the world and getting high with gypsies because you think you're better than us all?"

"What?" I exclaimed, eyes almost popping from their sockets as I did so. "People actually believe shit like that?"

"Oh, that's one of the milder ones." Pete shrugged it off, continuing to doodle what I believed was a shark attacking Skully on the corner of his planner in blue biro - perhaps sometimes it was best just to not ask questions. "I'm totally staying behind with you, because I want to know what the fuck is going on."

"Mikey's not told you-" I began, assuming that Mikey would have been the one to start half of the rumours circulating school right now, because you know, that was indeed friendship at its finest.

"Oh so Mikey knows everything and I don't?" Pete rolled his eyes; scribbling all over his doodle and wrecking the front cover of the planner in the process, though I didn't particularly think he at all cared about something like that.

"Mikey only knows because it's related to Gerard - his brother, my boyfriend, and really, Pete this is such a big fucking mess that maybe it would indeed be better if you didn't know." I exhaled loudly, already knowing that there really wasn't a chance that a warning like that was ever even going to slightly hinder Pete. "Seriously, Pete, three guesses where I got this black eye."

"You got punched." Pete replied rather nonchalantly, and I considered giving him a black eye of his very own as well.

"No shit." I rolled my eyes in response, turning away from Pete, my gaze falling outside the window and the figure of some kid that had forgotten to check whether the classroom they were smoking behind was empty or not, luckily for them, it wasn't like Mr Toro actually gave all that much of a shit anyway. "What did Mikey tell you about his leg?" I asked, perhaps just out of interest, or maybe for some inspiration for my injury related lie.

"That he fell out of a tree after being dared by some guy to climb to the top and strip naked after he lost a bet regarding how many girls he could make out with in one night." Pete recited Mikey's bullshit in such a sincere tone that I couldn't help but crack up.

"Yeah, that's all a total fucking lie." I rolled my eyes, wondering if Mikey had actually told anyone the truth, even whatever girlfriend he was with this week - I doubted it. Mikey was just that kind of guy, and maybe so was I, because it hardly seemed like I was at all keen to spill my whole life story to Pete, was I?

Then again, it was just Pete, and then again, that was just another excuse and I guessed that was just when I couldn't quite lie to myself anymore.

-

"Is there any explanation whatsoever, Frank?" Ray began as the students began to make their way out of the classroom, Pete deliberately lingering around, and catching Ray's attention as he did so. "Do you want Pete here?"

I glanced over at Pete, who met my eyes with a gaze that said more than words ever could and really, I'd forgotten what guilt like this felt like. "It's fine." I eventually settled upon an answer that would grant me karma, but inevitably, sudden death, but maybe that was just about already destined for me, considering the mess I'd gotten myself neck deep into already.

"I don't know where to start." I exclaimed into the tense silence, as both sets of eyes never turned away from me, and not a single word of any sense made its way to my lips.

"Start with where you've been, and then who you were with, and then maybe why." Ray exhaled, sitting down, knowing that he was trained to deal with students' problems but never anything on this kind of level. "And I guess we'll just have to fill in the gaps as we go along."

"I don't exactly know where I was, but I was with Gerard and we were in a car and he kept driving for days - running away, and it took me far too long to convince him to turn around and go back home and face what he'd done... and I found this out later, but his mum doesn’t even have the slightest fucking clue, and of course I'm not going to just tell her, but dear lord, this is such a fucking mess." I shook my head as I spoke, falling back into a chair, fixating my eyes upon the window, and concluding that the continuation of silence was a prompt for me to continue in my explanation.

"Why?" I sighed, glancing at Ray, briefly, and gathering nothing from his face and beating myself up about it in consequence. "Well, that's where it all gets really fucked up, because to hell with the fact that anything here is vaguely legal, let alone not a well guarded secret that I'm probably not even supposed to know, but really, ex-boyfriends, especially jealous ones just fuck up everyone's life so fucking bad, I just... fuck..."

"Mikey said something about Gerard fucking up again." Pete spoke up, and I considered punching him, because dear god, Gerard had entirely screwed everything over so fucking bad, but there was no way I was ever going to let anyone say anything like that about my boyfriend.

"Maybe the reason he's keeps making mistakes is because everyone seems to do nothing but criticise every single fucking move he makes everyday." I snapped out all at once, and not thinking for one moment about the impact my words would leave, because maybe I deserved the luxury of hurting someone just this once, just after all of this shit.

"Something about medication." Pete continued, almost as if he was oblivious to everything and the way those fucking words made me want to give him a black eye to perfectly match mine.

"He didn't take it... for a while... for too long maybe, but he took it last night and he took it this morning and I'm sure of that because I saw him-"

"You're staying with him right now?" Ray asked, just casually, in a totally teacher like manner as he tried not to think about the conations of something like that. "What do your parents think about that?"

"My dad." I corrected, rolling my eyes at the fact that I'd even referred to him by such a name, because there wasn't a chance in hell that he deserved such a title. "Well, he doesn't fucking care at all, of course. I'm a faggot - he's got a problem with that, and I would assume he's happier having not seen me in a while now, and that goes both ways, by the way. I'm eighteen, so it doesn't matter anyway. I can legally live where I want."

"Okay, I'm not invading anything, but you're important, Frank, and believe it or not, I care about you." Ray exhaled, running a hand back through his hair and cursing a little as it got stuck. "Look, this is confidential still, but from what I've already heard, this is still pretty serious, and I'm here if you need to talk to someone, okay?"

"Yeah, okay, but dear god please don't make me go to counselling like this one bitch of a teacher did a while ago - that was just messed up, fucking sucked..." I shook my head as I spoke and the time when I barely even knew Gerard came back like a thousand shockwaves all at once. "Can I go now?"

Ray sighed, shrugging, almost as if he'd utterly given up at that point, "fine, but seriously, Frank, if you do need to talk-"

"Yeah, Ray, I've got the message." I rolled my eyes, storming out of the music classroom, Pete at my heels like some sort of dumb puppy - perhaps I was just being an asshole, and not appreciating the one vague notion towards a friend I actually had.

"So this is all to do with some asshole of an ex-boyfriend?" Pete asked, running a little to catch up to me as I made my way out of the building and down to some hidden corner of the campus where I could have a mental breakdown in a relative amount of peace.

"Yeah, some asshole of a dead ex-boyfriend." I corrected him, rolling my eyes and cringing as I tried not to think of the mysterious caller that Gerard had probably contacted without me to tell him not to.

"Dead?" Pete exclaimed, almost as if the concept of death had never before come anywhere close to him. "How?"

"Yeah, that's kind of the big secret and massive problem here, Pete."

"He killed himself?"

"Oh, how I wish."

-

"They're just pills, Gerard." Her words meant nothing to the twenty three year old who acted like the twenty was silent, stood in the kitchen, throwing what couldn't help but resemble a hissy fit as I made my way through the door. Mikey, having already arrived home, only rolled his eyes at me before making his way back into the living room. "Just take them."

"All you ever seem to fucking care about is pills, Jesus Christ, it's like all you want is some drugged up vegetable of a son-" Gerard, again went too far, leaving me stood like a deer in the headlights as Mrs Way caught my gaze and gave me something that was half way between an apologetic glance and a look that screamed 'please talk someone sense into him because you're really the only one who can'.

Gerard soon followed his mother's gaze, his eyes falling upon me with a heavy sigh, and perhaps that meant something - that I meant something, or perhaps it didn't, and perhaps I just didn't have time to spend hours obsessing over stupid things like that.

"Hey, Frank." Gerard broke the silence with words that were spoken like they were forced out and barely meant anything at all, but the look in his eyes said something entirely different, and I knew that maybe Gerard just liked to lie a lot, and I just knew even more that I had an awful difficultly when it came to which side of him I actually trusted, if any.

"Hey." I returned, perhaps just out of the need to be polite, sensing the tension in the room and hating the fact that it was already becoming rather evident that I would have to dig for the subject of their previous disagreement because it was simply far too obvious of a fact that neither of the two were at all inclined to inform me. "So... what was that all about?"

Mrs Way sighed, clenching her fists, as Gerard turned to her, almost expectant that she'd answer for him and fuck up his life for him, so he didn't have to. Mrs Way said nothing, and so did Gerard, and it was only then that I began to gather the gravity of this situation and I did not like it at all.

"What's going on?" I repeated, throwing my school bag down in the hallway and making my way over to the two of them, standing in between them, like this was an argument between Gerard and I or Gerard and Mikey, and not Gerard and his mother.

Gerard was the pattern there of course, and Gerard was most definitely the cause of trouble, but Gerard was the only person that made my heart beat so fast that I felt like flying and I most certainly was in no hurry to give that up anytime soon whatsoever, even if it killed me, and from the looks of things, it just might.

"Just a little disagreement." Mrs Way finally answered, exhaling loudly as she slid something into her son's hand, before making her way outside for either a breath of air or more likely a smoke. "It's fine - I'll leave you two alone, huh?"

"Little?" I rolled my eyes as she had walked away, turning to Gerard and object hidden away in his palm and the secrets that it held. "Seems like a real big fucking problem- what's that in your hand?"

"More pills." Gerard sighed, throwing his head back against the wall and not seeming to even flinch at the impact and the bang that came with it. "More fucking pills, because maybe one day they'll deem me drugged up enough to be a real part of society."

"Gerard, you are real, you are important." I promised him, linking my fingers with the ones of his empty hand.

"Yeah, whatever - to you, for sure, but no one else seems to think so, because you're the only one stupid enough to actually be in love with me." And just his once, I didn't get offended, because maybe he had a point. "And all you want is for me to tell my mum everything and you know what all that will do is? No, no you don't - it's just more mistakes, and more pills until they physically can't prescribe me any more, and then they take 'further action'."

"And what exactly does 'further action' entail?" I asked, a little concerned by the sarcastic tone with which his words were spun, but since it was Gerard and this wasn't exactly a rare occurrence, I wasn't exactly freaking out over it.

"Oh, yeah, they section me, so that sounds like fun-"

"Gerard!" I exclaimed, my eyes growing wide as they connected with his, because really, it was just the casual tone with which his words were uttered that really broke me right in two.

"What? Now that we're getting official you suddenly care how fucked up I am? I was right, you know, you are fucking stupid if you haven't noticed already." Gerard rolled his eyes, slamming the unopened box of pills down onto the kitchen table. "Fuck this, fuck them, fuck these, and fuck you."

"Shut up." I snapped, breaking him out of his little bubble of arrogance within seconds. "Fucking shut up, you prick."

"Make me." He uttered with a roll of those stupidly pretty hazel eyes, and I did. 

I shut him up with my lips on his and the mess we caused of sloppy kisses and the collisions of noses as we didn't quite fit, but despite that, it was still always too good to be true, and I let him whisper something into my ear about sex and forgetting everything, and I let him make me agree, because maybe it would help if I could just forget about this mess for an hour or two.

Of course, that kind of forgetting was in no way permanent, and it soon dawned upon me, that we were in no way permanent.

But I could very easily forget about that for just an hour or two.

-

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