Frank had fallen asleep with tears on his cheeks, at some time in the middle of the night in his car on the way out of New York, and had awoken to a spectacular sunrise as they drove through towns and roads he found himself familiar with - it felt different, it felt weird, but there was this sensation throughout the entirety of Frank's body: a tingling feeling, like he belonged here, that despite the hell that he'd runaway from, he'd always belong here.

And perhaps much the same could be said for the redhead in the driver's seat; Frank didn't even know that Gerard could drive, Frank wasn't even sure he actually could, but they hadn't died yet, and he was too tired to give much of a fuck otherwise.

It was only as he fully sat up in his seat, fixating his gaze out the front window and the world ahead of him, that his brain and sanity finally kicked in and he came to the slap to the face realisation that he hadn't dreamt at all.

It was odd, and it was like suddenly his whole mind was on fire, and he couldn't even find the words to convey it to Gerard, because he could barely understand it himself, let alone explain it, fuck, was it the drive? Was it Jersey? Was it this place? Had it all been just some yearning at the back of his mind for home, that fucked him over and manipulated him into returning home? Fuck. Or perhaps it was just a fluke, and perhaps hell would be in his mind the very moment he closed his eyes tonight once.

"What was it?" Gerard asked, glancing across at Frank in the passenger seat, having noticed the shorter man's awakening, but Frank only stared at him: all wide sleepy eyes and confusion. "The dream," Gerard stressed, "your dream."

"Oh..." Frank trailed off, pushing his hair out of his face and setting his gaze on the Jersey sunrise: the very sunrise he hadn't encountered in years. "I didn't have one." Frank admitted, his tone muffled and shaky, but sincere and, of course, honest.

Gerard's eyes widened, and he even turned to look at Frank, "what?"

"Gerard get your fucking eyes back on the road- look, do you want me to drive, you need a break, don't you?" Frank offered, sitting up straighter in his seat, and totally not changing the subject.

"No, Frank, I don't need a break: I'm dead, I don't get tired or fatigued." Gerard rolled his eyes, "I'm better at driving than I expected, you know? Like I haven't actually driven before, and-"

"You're fucking kidding me-"

"No, you know, I told you? Back when I was... back before... my mum never let me drive or anything..." He trailed off, "well fuck her, because I'm great at driving: no accidents, no deaths, look at me, Frankie!" He exclaimed with entirely too much vigour.

"I fucking-..." Frank trailed off, "I fucking give up." He shook his head, grabbing a cigarette from his pocket and putting his feet up on the dashboard as he lit it.

"That's a safety hazard." Gerard gestured vaguely with one hand towards Frank's feet.

"You can't drive - that's a safety hazard." Frank stressed, leaning back in his seat and reassessing his existence briefly. "But... yeah... I didn't dream, I have no idea why or what... I just... it's a good thing, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is." Gerard smiled, "maybe you're getting better, Frankie, see I told you that you were better off without those pills: now they've worn off, look you're doing better, aren't you?"

"I guess." Frank shrugged it off, not entirely sure if he agreed with Gerard, but he was in no mood to get in an argument with the guy in that moment.

"There's... there's also... this... thing that I may have discovered like an hour ago while you were asleep." Gerard began, his voice shaking a little as he did so, "I stopped to get you some breakfast, which is on the backseat by the way, and I didn't want anyone to see me, like I was very fucking sure of that, but... but... people did, it was like... like I was just... alive, I was so fucking freaked out... I... I didn't know what the fuck was happening, then I realised... it's this place and you."

"Are you serious, Gerard?" Frank exclaimed, sitting up immediately, "this... this... you're supposed to be dead..."

"Yeah, I know, well, you know how when I'm closer to you and like we have this connection thing now, I get... I get like... 'stronger', or more human, you know what I mean? It's like that with my body too, I think, and because now we're suddenly a hell of a lot closer to my body, and you're right with me, I'm like... twice as 'real', fuck, this sounds weird, I'm not entirely sure myself, but... I really don't know how we can deal with this... sure, you can pop in and see my mum, but fuck, I can't." Gerard shook his head, "and then if people just see me walking around, like people I know, like my hair my fucking hair, it sticks out like a fucking sore thumb-"

"Dye your hair." Frank met his gaze, "black, I think black would look good on you, come on, Gee, you've had the same fucking colour for like eleven years, anyway, then if you just don't make eye contact and it's not people who know you directly then, then we'll be fine." Frank promised him, "but yeah, we're gonna have to sleep in the car, I guess."

"What is this, Frank? How long are we staying here?" Gerard asked, slowing the car a little as what they instantly recognised to be their hometown approached.

"I don't know." Frank admitted, "I just... I need to figure this mess out... I want to see my dad again, that sounds fucked up, but... I want to set things straight... I just want everything to make sense again."

"What if it never does? What if we never go back to New York?"

"Well, then, I guess... surely it's better for you here isn't it? You're more real, you're stronger, doesn't it feel better? Like as soon as I woke up here, I just felt better, different, you know? Didn't you get that?"

"I did." Gerard admitted, his tone barely audible. "But come on, your big plan is hair dye, this is bullshit, Frankie-"

"If someone claims that you're a dead man walking it's an insane accusation, isn't it? We just act like we don't know what the fuck is going on, and you can just be someone who looks a bit like Gerard, come on, Gee, please... I..."

"Fucking fine, go buy in there and buy some hair dye, huh?" Gerard parked the car, folding his arms in disbelief. "I know this abandoned house on the outskirts of town that like no one ever goes in, there's some bullshit rumours about it, we can dye it there."

"Gerard, breaking into abandoned houses, seriously?" Frank exclaimed, "I'm twenty eight, not seventeen again-"

"Well, I think you're forgetting something, Frankie, I haven't aged a day!"

-

"It's definitely in worse condition than when I saw it last." Gerard commented, running his hand along the chipped paint coating of the fence that had once been in a good enough shape to surround the property.

"What when you saw it last, like, a decade ago?" Frank raised his eyebrows, running a hand back through his hair, following Gerard, just a few paces behind him; Gerard was oddly enthusiastic: all vigour and smiles - perhaps it was just Jersey again, and the physicality of his body and his spiritual strength, but whatever it was, Frank really liked seeing Gerard like this, because although he wasn't depressed exactly, he wasn't explicitly happy very often either, and it seemed as if this very moment was an exception.

Frank was just at peace with himself; he'd gotten some sleep, Gerard was happy, Gerard felt more real, this place felt like home, and this was some stupid fucking idea that had Gerard written all over it, and if Frank closed his eyes he could probably kid himself that he was seventeen again, but he reckoned that he wouldn't want to pull his eyes away from the beauty that was Gerard Way, even if just for a second.

"Twelve years ago, actually." Gerard corrected him, coming to the end of the fencing that had survived the past twelve years, and waiting for Frank to catch up with him, before sliding through the gap into the fence into the garden of the house. "I spent a lot of time here before I met you. You replaced it, in an odd way: you became what I needed, more important than this place. It was just a place to think, silence, a room alone, somewhere I could breathe..." He paused for a moment, running his fingertips over the decaying brickwork. "It's still beautiful, even after all these years, it's ancient, but beautiful."

"Like you then." Frank smirked as he made his way through the fence, feeling entirely too old for this, but fuck it, fuck everything, and fuck Gerard, yes, Frank really wanted to fuck Gerard right now, but perhaps not against a decaying ancient wall.

"Hey." Gerard narrowed his eyes, shaking his head, "not cool."

"Like you then." Frank continued to grin, but Gerard didn't even deem that one worthy of a response, simply making his way up to the front door and giving it a push. "Locked?" Frank raised an eyebrow as he approached from behind, and watched as Gerard shook his head at him, before retrieving a key from beneath a nearby plant pot, containing a bush which may have been green when Frank was twelve or something from the looks of it. "You're telling me there's been a key under the plant pot for fucking twelve years and no one stopped to look."

"No one fucking goes here, Frankie, that's why it's so good." Gerard grinned, pushing the door open with a creak, and leading the way into a wooden hallway, illuminated only by two large windows on either side of the house: it was enough light to see in to an adequate degree, but Frank longed to hit a light switch, and instead, made his way into the room on the left, which was almost completely illuminated by the sunlight from the window.

Gerard shut the front door behind them and followed his boyfriend into the room on the left. "I never saw anyone else here, you know?" He began, stepping closer to Frank, "it's weird, it's like this place exists only in my head, and it's kind of weird to have you here even, but... you're you, and you're perhaps the only person I'd consider letting here."

"You're right: it is beautiful, oddly so, but... just... peaceful..." Frank trailed off, reaching out to touch the windowpane, and the coating of dust lining it coming off onto his fingertips as he did so. "Why did you stop coming, though?" He asked, beginning to make patterns in the dust with his fingertips.

"What do you mean?" Gerard asked, stepping forward and mimicking Frank's actions, however as opposed to random assorted patterns, going straight for a little heart in the top corner, with 'G + F' written inside it.

"Are you fourteen?" Frank asked, looking up at the heart Gerard had drawn, with a disapproving, but oddly sentimental look in his eyes.

"I'm not the one as tall as a fourteen year old." Gerard shrugged it off, before proceeding to write 'Frankie sucks dick' just a little below it.

Frank just narrowed his eyes at Gerard, having heard it all a million times before, of course, "you said..." he began, following on from Gerard's question, before he'd noticed the shitty little heart, "you said I replaced this place for you, or something. Why did you stop coming?"

"Mikey followed me here once." Gerard began, letting out a sigh, "it was horrible, it was like an invasion of privacy and I freaked out, and by freaked out... I punched him... you know what I was like... you remember what he told you about me then?" Frank nodded. "So I was scared he'd follow me back here again, and I needed somewhere else to be at peace with myself, so I took my art supplies, ready to draw, and I walked the opposite way... and... and I found this beautiful clearing in this beautiful forest, but the forest was nothing next to the boy I met there."

"Fuck off." Frank blushed, smiling like an idiot as he did so. "So, really, you should have thanked Mikey for being an invasive little ass, otherwise you'd have never met me, and we wouldn't be here right now... fuck that's weird to think about."

"I reckon I would have met you anyway, we kept bumping into each other, didn't we? At that shitty therapy group, yeah? We'd have met there, and you followed me outside and just watched me smoke and stood with me like an idiot, but you were beautiful, and-"

"I only followed you out because I'd seen you so many times before: I couldn't stop thinking about you, you know, you fucking asshole." Frank exclaimed, his words echoing through the house as he raised his voice. "Hey, this place echoes!" He tried again, his voice even louder.

"And you're calling me fourteen..." Gerard trailed off, running a hand back through his hair, "come on, we can dye my hair upstairs."

"What does this place have fucking running water because I find that hard to believe-"

"It's an old house, Frank, it has this really weird little plumbing thing where the water gets piped up from the river... it's not exactly running, like it's a weird little well thing, come on, I'll show you the bathroom." Gerard reached his hand out to the shorter man, who made a point of rolling his eyes before taking it and letting Gerard lead him upstairs, cringing visibly with every creak from the stairs.

Gerard pushed open the first door on the right, and the bathroom was quite obviously not the most hygienic place in the world, but it'd do, well, it'd have to, because Gerard had become oddly insistent upon dying his hair ever since he'd first agreed to it, which baffled Frank slightly, but he didn't question it much.

"I swear you know this place better than you know your house here." Frank let out a sigh, leaning back against the bathroom wall and opening the packet of hair dye he'd bought earlier that day.

"I definitely spent more time here than I did at 'home'." Gerard smiled awkwardly, his eyes widening as he met his his reflection: astoundingly vivid, even in the shattered, dusty mirror. "Fuck, my reflection, I look... I look... this place, fuck, this place." He shook his head, adjusting his hair awkwardly.

"Hey, at least we only have to do this once because your hair doesn't grow when you're dead." Frank added, as he scanned his eyes over the instructions.

"Mmm..." Gerard nodded, far too preoccupied with his own reflection to really add much else in the way of a response.

"Right so," Frank began, "I put bottle A into bottle B and shake 'vigorously' before applying: first to the roots and then the length of the hair, before leaving for fifteen minutes, and then rinsing under warm water-"

"I can assure you that this," Gerard gestured to the aforementioned odd little well thing that looked like it was from the 1700s, "does not do warm water."

"Okay then, under cold, nasty ass river water, and then dry, and you're done." Frank finished, throwing the instructions to the ground. "Are you doing this yourself or am I doing it for you?"

"Well I could manage it myself, but... I'd rather you did it for me..." Gerard grinned.

"You're an asshole." Frank shook his head, but didn't protest in the slightest, "sit on this fucking stool thing then," he kicked a stool from the corner into the middle of the room, finding himself somewhat disappointed when it didn't break instantly the very moment Gerard sat on it - maybe it was something do with the fact that he was a ghost, whatever, Frank was still disappointed.

-

"I look fucking hot... like a weird goth dude, but hot... hot weird goth dude..." Gerard had been running his hands through his newly black hair for something like the past five minutes: unable to take his eyes off his reflection in the mirror.

"Vain goth dude, more like." Frank commented from the doorway, pulling his cellphone out of his pocket for the first time since New York, and looking over the six new messages from Brendon and Ryan combined; he knew he should probably take a look at them, you know, nevermind tell them that he was in a completely different state and that if they went into his empty apartment, he had in fact not been murdered and/or kidnapped, but he really couldn't be bothered, because Frank was a quality friend.

And okay, Gerard looked insanely hot.

"Hey, shut it, hot vain goth dude, maybe..." He trailed off, turning away from his reflection for the first time, and grinning at Frank, "come on, admit it, I'm so fucking hot right now."

"Can we just go back downstairs, because this fucking bathroom is tiny, cramped, and cold, and downstairs is so much nicer-"

"And you obviously need to write 'Gerard Way is a major fucking hottie' on the window." Gerard smirked, but made his way downstairs regardless, leaving Frank to shake his head as he hurried to follow him, shaking his head as Gerard walked over to the corner of the room to the left, opening the chest of drawers in the corner like he owned the fucking place.

"What are you doing?" Frank asked, quickening his pace to catch up to the technically older man.

"I just remembered something." Gerard began, opening the top drawer with a click, "I left my old sketchbook here, if it's still here, I will shit myself... because who the fuck wants to look at art I did as an angsty teenager-"

"I do." Frank grinned, putting his arm around Gerard, and watching intently as he pulled a black sketchbook, covered in dust, but still vaguely intact, out of the drawer.

"How did I guess?" Gerard rolled his eyes, stepping away from Frank and into the lighter part of the room as he opened the book onto it's first page. "I was sixteen when I started this book..." He exclaimed, "god, you don't even want to imagine sixteen year old me..."

"I looked about the same at sixteen as I did at seventeen." Frank shrugged it off, "and I didn't look that bad," he followed Gerard into the centre of the room.

"I looked nothing like I did at sixteen as I did at twenty two... as I do now..." He trailed off, "at what is technically...."

"Thirty two." Gerard shook his head in disbelief, "no, that can't be right- hey, look," he showed the opened page on the sketchbook to Frank, "that's Kurt Cobain, don't you think that's actually pretty good, I mean, the nose is off, but, you know, I was sixteen, I tried."

Frank smiled, taking the sketchbook from Gerard, "that's fucking amazing." He smiled up at Gerard as he flicked to the next page, finding himself not entirely sure what he was looking at, "what's this?" He asked Gerard, holding it up to him.

"It's a memory from when I was like eleven or twelve, I don't know, it was weird, I was at the park, and there was this boy, he was hurt or something, I think he was climbing this tree, and I think he fell out, and he was so nice, you know, and I stayed with him, I helped him, I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't been there. That was like the one time in my life where I felt like a good person." Gerard reached out, tracing the pencil lines with his fingertips, "it's kind of fuzzy, because I can't really remember it properly, it seems distant, like maybe it didn't really happen or something, but I don't care if it did or not, because it's a nice memory, and I like it."

"See, you can be a good guy when you want to be." Frank smiled, watching as Gerard closed the sketchbook.

He shrugged in response, "I never found out what happened to the boy, though. Wish I did."

"Who knows? Maybe you'll meet him again someday."

"Maybe."

-

hey pals!!! i hope u enjoyed this chapter because i actually think this is my favourite chapter i've written of anything ever lmao ayy. anyway votes and comments would be v cool & i love u all :) :)