"Don't ever have kids." Pete began as he made his way back into the kitchen, putting Louis down in his high chair; the two year old completely unaware as to what his father had just said about him.

Frank laughed a little, raising his eyebrows slightly, "I doubt I will," he admitted with an awkward kind of shrug.

"Why not?" Pete asked, sitting down at the table and looking across at Frank with perhaps an excess of curiosity.

"I thought you were telling me never to have them, like literally thirty seconds ago." Frank pointed out, a small smile upon his lips.

"Yeah, well, I didn't exactly mean that, did I?" Pete laughed, glancing back at Louis, who had amused himself with counting his own fingers, because of course, you gotta check they're all there, don't you? "I love my kids. And I love Mikey. And I even love how he tells me off for swearing around them. I also love how he still hasn't noticed that I named them after the gayer half of One Direction - please, don't tell him, I think he'd genuinely kill me."

Frank's eyes widened in disbelief, but then again, this was Pete. "Are you kidding me?"

"Well..." Pete trailed off, laughing a little, "we chose Louis together at first, because well Louis is a nice name, and then I'm like another kid, okay, what goes well with Louis, and I mean, it's obviously Harry. But like we're not having anymore kids because I think he'd start to get suspicious if we got a Niall or a Liam, and then it's just tragic that Zayn left and if we had four kids called Louis, Harry, Niall, and Liam, I mean you know I wouldn't be able to restrain myself from ensuring that they believed they had a brother called Zayn who got eaten by a pack of hyenas at a young age-"

"Are you sure you're fit to be a parent?" Frank asked, leaning back in his chair, laughing a little.

"No." Pete exclaimed, shaking his head a little too enthusiastically. "That's why Mikey exists, because I think he kind of knows what he's doing some of the time, and I mean, neither of them have died yet, so we're doing fine."

"It's cute." Frank noted, "really happy for you guys. Kind of jealous, honestly."

"Go on then, find yourself someone," Pete encouraged, "you can do the whole family thing too."

"Nah," Frank shook his head, "it's like leather pants, I think they look great on some people, but for me, fuck no."

"Frank, did you just compare my children to a trashy item of clothing?" Pete's eyes widened in what Frank desperately hoped was mock offense.

"Nope." Frank let out a sigh, glancing at the back door, "is it alright if I go out for a smoke?"

"Didn't know you smoked, you've changed." Pete shook his head in disbelief but nodded in the vague direction of the back door.

"I've changed?" Frank snorted at that, "I'm not the one with kids." He closed the door behind him before he could quite catch Pete's response, and really he wasn't missing out on much.

He sat down on the porch steps, his knees pulled up to his chest, and fixating his gaze upon the horizon as he lit a cigarette, wondering if Gerard might decide to grace him with his presence, or whether he was insist upon fucking off for an undetermined amount of time right now, which was really not something Frank was all that pleased with, because as annoying as Gerard could get, Frank couldn't deny the fact that he did indeed depend upon him to some degree.

"You know? This is fucking... weird."

And of course, Frank nearly had a heart attack as the space beside him filled with Gerard's figure: somewhat transparent and ghost like in appearance, which had Frank confused.

"I look weird." Gerard nodded, meeting Frank's gaze, "I know. I'm using up a lot of energy here, just focusing on this, what's real, what's right now: there are a lot of memories, it's kind of a mess. It's kind of hard to be here." He went on to admit, "but I can do it, don't worry about me, don't you dare worry about me."

Frank looked out across the yard, "I can imagine there's a lot for you here."

"I can pretty much see my whole life in this house. Right from day one: there's my mother and my father and me, then my mother and my father and Mikey and me, and then just my mother and Mikey and me... and then just my mum and Mikey. And then he came back again. I can see that too. I can feel parts of him here too, and I don't like that. And I don't think I can enter that living room at all because it's just you after being beaten up, and... then you staying the night that time, and-"

"High school musical." Frank finished for him, laughing a little, "I can't believe we watched High School fucking Musical."

"Yeah. There's a lot of us, a lot of memories of us." Gerard nodded, biting his lip, "and a lot of that comprises of me being a dick to you, and for that, I'm so fucking sorry."

"You don't need to apologise, Gee, it's fine. You're different now, you grew the fuck up-"

"I haven't grown up at all. I just died, I just lost everything. And then that was when I stopped taking the world for granted." Gerard let out a sigh, turning his gaze away from Frank.

It was then that Frank remembered his dream, "you know the dreams I kept having?"

"Mmm..." Gerard nodded, looking up a little.

"They're set here. They were in the hallway and the stairs here, and I only realised that as I saw them again, but it's obviously like that and I don't understand why or how, but I think it might be like with the dreams about Jersey, like they might stop now I'm here, I just... I don't know."

Gerard paused for a moment, "I think to some degree your subconscious is dictating your entire existence. What happens if you dream about like a volcano or something? You gonna go there to get your dreams to stop?"

Frank shook his head, "I don't think it works like that. I don't know how it works, but I just... I don't know."

Gerard nodded, sighing a little, "they kept my room the same. The exact same how I left it. No one's touched it or barely even gone inside. I can feel it. Ask them why the fuck they did that. I hate it."

"Why do you hate it?"

"I just want them to get over me, I'm just a burden. I get that now." And with that, Gerard faded away, leaving Frank to his cigarette and the worst parts of his head, alone.

-

"You can stay here as long as you want." Mikey held the offer out like it was casual, nothing at all - it wasn't, because truth be told, Frank wanted that, wanted to pretend that it was all okay for as long as he could, and here, with Mikey and Pete, he could see a chance of that happening.

But he knew more than he knew anything that it was most certainly the last thing Gerard wanted.

"I..." Frank shrugged a little, leaning back against the wall of the living room: Pete having gone out and Mikey sat there, attempting to feed Harry. Harry was perhaps making a conscious effort to make it hard for him, although, Frank did doubt the not even one year old capable of such a thing, but still, Mikey wasn't having the easiest of times.

"You what?" Mikey asked looking up after a minute or so of the silence that his words had dissipated into had passed.

Frank shrugged, blushing a little. "I don't know. I just, it's this place, and I..."

"There's a lot. There's not just one elephant in the room, there are fucking five hundred." Mikey announced, glancing down at Harry, and letting out a sigh, "he's too young to pick up words yet, isn't he?"

"I don't know a thing about babies, but I guess so." Frank found himself saying, just perhaps because he knew that Mikey wanted or even just needed to hear it.

"I fucking hope so." He paused, shaking his head as he came to realise that he'd cursed again. "You just can't help cursing, sometimes, a lot of the time..." Mikey let out a sigh, glancing up at Frank and forcing an awkwardly shaped smile, "I think we need to stop acting so awkward and polite, Frank, we need to talk, now that Pete's out. I'll take Harry upstairs- you know what? Come with me, there's something I should show you.

"What's that?" He found himself asking, looking more than just a little anxious as he did so.

"Come on," Mikey gestured for him to get up as opposed to providing him with any form of real answer. "It's perhaps easier to show you."

And Frank didn't quite know what to say in response to that, so he just found himself doing as Mikey told him.

"Why didn't you come back before?" Mikey asked, before common sense could quite cut in, as they made their way upstairs, Harry in his hands.

Frank bit his lip, unsure as to quite how he was supposed to respond. "I... just... I..."

"It's okay. I'm sorry." Mikey cut in, before interrupting his train of thought, "you know what? Maybe I'm not because I know just being polite and apologising for everything and not daring to find shit out isn't going to get us anywhere. So, Frank, in the least aggressive way possible, what the fuck happened to you?"

Frank let out a sigh, because as much as he hated talking about these things, he just knew that Mikey was right - Mikey was older and cleverer than him, after all. "I was in hospital, for a while... long while," he began, his voice suddenly very quick, unlocking the lock upon the door that had stayed closed in his mind for a long time now - the door back to that place, back to the years in which he'd lost all sight of himself.

Mikey bit his lip, the two making their way into the nursery. He placed Harry down in his bed, before turning to face Frank and continuing to ask him, "how long? What happened? Talk to me, Frank. I'm concerned about you, I missed you, you're my friend, I-"

"I stayed there until I was twenty five." Frank went on to say, his voice just as quite, and finding himself perhaps even physically incapable of meeting Mikey's gaze. "It... it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it was... it was... I... I don't know what it was, I've blocked the most of it out of my head. I try my best to avoid it, to forget about it, but it was certainly the low of my life."

"I'm sorry." Mikey let out a sigh, moving forward and pulling Frank into a hug, "I'm so sorry, but you... you know how bad you were. You needed that help, and now you're better, aren't you? So all in all, it was a good thing, wasn't it?"

"I'm trying my best to convince myself that it was." Frank admitted, pulling away, "sometimes that's hard, sometimes that isn't. I guess I needed it, but I also guess I needed anything but those years I spent there. But all in all, I wouldn't be who I am today without all that happened to me, so I can't really even wish to mess with things and the way they happened."

"Can I ask what happened? How did you get released? What diagnosis did they give you-"

"Mikey, please don't say 'released' makes it sound like a fucking prison." Frank cursed, raising his voice for the first time in a while. "I got out because I got better, didn't I? With medicine and therapy, although the both of them were pretty shit, but I'm fine now. I feel fine, I am fine."

"So what did you get diagnosed with?" Mikey continued to ask, despite the way that Frank's voice made it obvious that he shouldn't.

"Well they reckoned I have schizophrenia." Frank snapped, looking away, "I used to agree with them. I'm not so sure anymore, in fact, I'm certain I don't, but you'll just get pissed at me for saying that, because you can't know because you won't understand what else there is to it. To it all. There's a lot going on in my head, and none of it is to do with fucking schizophrenia."

"Alright..." Mikey paused, not entirely sure what to say to that at all, because Frank didn't seem 'crazy' to him, and he knew he wouldn't lie to him, but still, doctors tended to be right about these things, surely they couldn't have kept Frank there for so many years if he didn't actually have the illness they reckoned he did. "What is going on in your head?"

"Gerard." Frank said without thinking, raising his eyebrows at the way Mikey winced a little in response to the name, "he's your brother not Voldemort, I can say his name, can't I?"

"He was." Mikey sighed a little, "was my brother because he's dead."

"Just because he's dead doesn't mean he never existed." Frank exclaimed, even beginning to come off a little offended in his speech.

"I never said that, fuck, of course I know he existed, I care about him, I fucking thinking about him all the time, but he's dead now and I can't change that." Mikey sighed, glancing back at Harry, and cursing himself for continuing to swear in front of him, "I should show you what I meant to." He gestured for Frank to leave the room, closing the door behind them.

"And what is this thing?" Frank asked, glancing around at the walls: suddenly growing so much more familiar, so much more alike to the walls, to the view from his dreams, until he found himself with such a sense of deja vu that it was rather like a punch to the stomach.

Mikey stood before the door, where the figure from his dream had. The door being, of course, the door from his dream, and Frank found himself frozen, if only momentarily now, where he'd been stood in his first dream.

"It's Gerard's old room." Mikey said it before Frank could quite piece it together. "We kept it the same, all the same furniture, everything as he left it. Pete wanted to turn it into another bedroom and I know we are when the kids get older, but I just... I just can't bring myself to destroy it - it's like all that's left of Gerard. I need this, I do."

And with that, Mikey reached out and pushed open the bedroom door, and like a punch to his gut, came the view of Gerard's room and the bedroom they'd spent their last morning together alive: the fuck and the argument, heaven and hell, and then just a downwards spiral from then on, and Frank just couldn't shake the feeling that part of him was tied to that room rather physically, and he only found that feeling confirmed as he followed Mikey inside, and encountered a sensation much akin to the one he'd encountered as he crossed over from New York into New Jersey.

"I don't know how much he would have appreciated this: keeping his bedroom, preserving him and his life, but I don't care, if he fucking cared that much he would have given more than a few lines in the way of a fucking suicide note." Mikey's voice broke as they stepped inside, biting his lip as he took in the walls and the furniture, making it evident immediately that he couldn't quite bring himself to go here much.

"He wouldn't like the idea of you keeping this part of him around, I think, something to do with him dragging you down, although, it doesn't make much sense to me. I think the truth is that he wouldn't want this to be how he would be remembered. I think he'd take much more kindly to a shrine."

Mikey laughed a little at that: that awkward crude gaspy, teary laughter, when you almost can't believe you're fucking laughing, because it doesn't make sense to you at all, but you find yourself with very little control of your emotions at all. "I guess."

"He wouldn't admit it, but he would really like the fact that you still care so much about him. He would never say it but he really does need people, and it sounds ridiculous but he's a very dependent person."

"Sounds like all you've done is contemplate and reflect upon his personality." Mikey added, raising his eyebrows a little.

"Well, you get bored when you spend years in hospital. I mean between trying to kill yourself and getting so drugged up you can't remember your own name, it does get pretty dull-"

"Frank." Mikey exclaimed, his eyes widening a little. "You're exaggerating, tell me you're exaggerating-"

"About the second one, yeah, but I... I tried to kill myself... obviously didn't succeed, I'm here now, don't want to kill myself anymore. I'm really good now, actually. It sounds fucking ridiculous because I'm basically surrounded with suffering and death, but emotionally I'm stable, and it's perhaps the best I've been in a long time, since I was about five, you know? But then, my mum was still alive." Frank let out a sigh, "I really miss her."

"I'm sorry, it's like everyone around you has died, that must be fucking horrible, I-"

"Gerard's your brother, and your mother died too." Frank reminded him, not that he really needed to, truth be told. "We both had shitty dads as well. We have a lot in common, really. Your dad's not dead, though, so-"

"He's fucking dead to me." Mikey let out a sigh. "I guess you're right, I mean, I just... I have Pete and the kids, and... fuck, who do you even have, Frank?"

"I've got friends back in New York. I'm fine." He assured him. "I've got you and Pete too. It's not like I'm going to disappear again. I promise. I'm good now, I have a proper life and I'm coping with it."

"Life wasn't fair to you at all." Mikey let out a sigh.

"Wasn't fair to you either." Frank added, shrugging a little, making his way over to the bed, Gerard's bed, and glancing over it - wondering if they'd fucking washed the sheets in ten years. "Did you wash the sheets on this?"

"No, I... I haven't touched it at all."

"Oh, because we fucked that morning. Hygiene tops sentiment, just saying." Frank let out a sigh.

"You're so fucking... calm about this all. Is that your meds? Because it's like... it's almost like it doesn't affect you at all anymore."

Frank shrugged, "could be my meds. Unlikely that it is, considering I don't take them anymore."

"Frank, you fucking- you're schizophrenic, you need to take them, or you could, you could harm someone or yourself, it's really bad, Frank, please listen to me, I-"

"He's not fucking schizophrenic."

Came a voice from behind the two of them - the one voice that was certain to ensure that Mikey had something close to a heart attack.

-

and only 90k words in do gerard and mikey have their first conversation of the fic, well its hardly a conversation yet but g e t r e k t. vote and comment pls i mean like why not its a gr8 thing 2 do. lov u !!!