"See, you're not so bad with kids, are you?" Frank laughed a little, sat down on the chair in one corner of the nursery, watching as Gerard stood up, holding Louis in his hands, even somewhat safely, which was shocking on all counts.

"No, you're actually not." Mikey added: lingering in the doorway, due to the fact that Pete was calling him from downstairs to help with Harry or something like that, but Mikey was really far more concerned with making sure that his brother didn't drop his kid and end up killing him, because yeah, ghost brother - that, Mikey could deal with, but ghost baby? No.

"I'm honoured." Gerard laughed a little, letting Louis move into his chest a little.

"I'm surprised." Mikey interjected: the world's widest grin on his face.

"No, he'd be good. I knew this. I saw this coming." Frank shook his head, "cause he likes to think that this isn't his thing, but secretly he has a soft spot-"

"Okay-" Gerard rolled his eyes, "Mikey's kids, yeah, Mikey's kids are cute, but I don't want my own kids - like full time parenting, not something I could deal with. I can handle holding a kid but not wiping shit out of their ass."

Frank grimaced at the mental image. "I think I agree with you on that one."

"I'm like the cool uncle anyway." Gerard exclaimed: grin on his face.

"No one's cooler than the ghost uncle." Frank rolled his eyes a little, "Uncle Spooky - that's you."

"Please don't." Gerard protested, only half meaning it.

"Uncle Spooky Skeleton." Frank continued, fucking grinning like hell.

Mikey promptly left. Because yeah, Frank could fucking take responsibility over his kids not dying if he was going to make fucking spooky skeleton jokes.

"You scared him off, Uncle Spooky-" Frank continued, giggling like a fucking idiot by this point.

"You're the worst." Gerard proclaimed, glancing down at Louis and then at Gerard, "you wanna hold Mikey's weird kid named after the gay one out of One Direction?"

"The gay one?" Frank raised his eyebrows at that. "There's more than one homosexual in One Direction, come on, Gerard, don't be silly, but give me the fucking kid, whatever."

"You don't sound like a very enthusiastic sort of not really uncle." Gerard shook his head in disappointment, before somewhat tentatively handing Frank the kid.

"Oh fuck off, you." Frank rolled his eyes, taking Louis into his arms and smiling a little, "Mikey's got cute kids, hasn't he?"

"Mmm..." Gerard nodded, "we'd have cute kids, because we're cute, but we're not gonna have kids okay, we can observe Mikey's just fine."

"Because we're cute." Frank scoffed, "not how it works."

"Mmm...." Gerard nodded, "good it isn't, because we wouldn't want a hypothetical ghost baby would we?"

Frank shrugged at that. "Anyway, ghost uncle is much better than ghost dad."

Gerard smirked to himself, "ghost daddy."

"Please don't." Frank seriously considered punching himself in the face in that moment.

"You should call me ghost daddy. I can be your ghost daddy-"

"Gerard you can stop being my boyfriend if you don't shut the fuck up..." Frank trailed off, shaking his head, but meeting Gerard's gaze with a small smile, just to ensure that he knew he was joking, because honestly, as much of an ass as Gerard was, he would never dump him, not for the world.

"That's fucking harsh, Frankie, be nice to your ghost daddy." Gerard smirked again, watching as Frank cringed.

"Please don't call yourself that." He exclaimed, passing Louis back to Gerard- his ghost daddy.

"I'll call myself what I want." Gerard insisted, grinning a little, placing Louis back in his bed and making his way over to Frank.

"Please shut up." Frank let out a sigh: his tone hushed, quieter as the distance between them decreased. "I love you, but you're literally the worst."

Gerard nodded, "I know." He pressed a kiss to Frank's forehead. "Do you think Mikey trusts me or not?" He asked after a moment: hesitance evident in his voice.

Frank found himself a little taken a back by his question. "Of course he does- he's your brother."

"Not like that, I mean..." Gerard trailed off, brushing his hair away from his face, "like trusts me, like you know, properly. Because I feel like maybe that's something like... he doesn't just a little."

"Is this about you holding Louis because-" Frank found himself cut off by a shake of Gerard's head.

"No, well, partly, but no." He let out a sigh, "just the little things. It's like me killing myself really permanently fucked things up."

"Well it did." Frank found himself saying, and rather bitterly indeed. "You get that, don't you?"

Gerard nodded, "course I do, it's just... it's been a while now, hasn't it-"

"Not for them. Yeah, I'm used to it, but Mikey's not used to this at all. You need to give it time, be patient for once, even. They'll get used to you again, it's just that you haven't seen them in ten years, it's like the normal amount that trust would fade in that time." Frank reassured him, "it's nothing that isn't going to revert back to how it should be in time, I promise you."

"You promise?" Gerard asked, smiling a little as he pressed a kiss to Frank's lips this time.

"Course I do." Frank laughed it off, pulling away, "we probably shouldn't make out in front of Mikey's kid."

Gerard shrugged, "remember when we made out on that swing and Mikey like stalked us to the park when you were still seventeen?" He laughed a little, blushing.

"Mikey hated me after that." Frank groaned, shaking his head in disbelief, "you're a terrible influence."

"I think he's forgiven you now, though," Gerard placed a hand on his shoulder in what was literally the shittiest form of reassurance ever.

"You don't say, it's been ten years, he's not as stubborn as you, Gee," he grinned up at him with that.

"Course he's not, I'm the most stubborn motherfucking ghost daddy on this planet." He proclaimed rather loudly: an unbelieving smug grin upon his face, making evident that he was far too proud of himself.

Frank punched himself in the face.

-

The two lay out on Gerard's bed at something like ten at night; the window lay half open, letting in a breeze that was perhaps just a little too cold for Frank's liking, but he really couldn't muster the energy required to get up and out of a warm, comfortable bed with his boyfriend to walk all the way across the room and close the window, like seriously, that was just too much.

"You're cold," Gerard began, breaking the silence - it had never been an awkward silence, mutual, a comfortable silence, perhaps - just a lack of words to fill conversation with, and they'd honestly gotten just a little bit further past the stage of awkward conversation.

Frank bit his lip, meeting Gerard's gaze and sighing a little, "you can read my thoughts and you use that power to tell me that I'm cold, something that maybe, just maybe, I might have already figured out for myself?" Frank raised his eyebrows a little, laughing.

Gerard rolled his eyes in response, getting up from the bed, leaving Frank to watch him with a certain intrigue as he made his way over to the window and shut it properly. "I can't read your mind," Gerard reminded him, for something like the seven millionth time, or at least it felt as such on Gerard's part.

"Just feel my emotions. Read my emotions, whatever." Frank rolled his eyes: more grateful than he'd ever let on for Gerard being nice enough to close the window for him. "How is cold even an emotion?"

"I can feel a bit more than your emotions, it's hard to explain, you know put into words, but like... I mean, I see things differently, being dead, as well, which is perhaps harder to explain, but when you're alive, you're just looking at things around you - they come simply, like you're stood in a 3D video, or something, I don't know, but as a ghost, it's like you get a sense of the objects around you, you feel their physical and emotional presence before you see that they're green, or whatever."

"That's really quite interesting, actually." Frank said after a moment, leaning into Gerard's side as he joined him back on the bed. "Is that to do with the memories thing, because you feel them, like everyone feels their memories, but since you like, your vision is more connected to what you feel, then you see them... like projections?"

"I actually hadn't thought-" Gerard's eyes widened, sitting up a little, "fuck, yeah, I think you've got it there." He glanced around the room, as if reminding himself how to see, "yeah... I... yeah... it's a lot all like a projection, honestly. It's weird."

"I'm dating a guy who died over ten years ago, I think weird isn't all that much of an issue for me, being brutally honest." Frank let out a laugh, meeting Gerard's gaze as he did so. "It's really intriguing, you know? I'm actually maybe even a little looking forward to seeing it myself, like when I die, even if that's in like fifty years time, or whatever."

"Don't talk about you dying," Gerard shook his head, biting his lip, "I don't like it."

"And you're actually dead." Frank's tone grew stern, "I don't like that either, but that doesn't mean I'm fucking treading around the subject or getting pissed about it. I've accepted it, and, being human, I'm going to die someday - accept that."

"Frank... I-"

"I'm sorry," Frank let out a sigh, shaking his head, "I overreact with you, and I really shouldn't-"

"Frank, you overreact?" Gerard pulled Frank into his chest and laughed a little, "I'm the one who killed himself after we had one argument."

Gerard's tone was lighthearted, perhaps even unbelievably so, but still, Frank stayed silent for a moment: unsure quite how to process just what Gerard had just said. "It wasn't just that, though." He said after a moment, "you know that."

Gerard nodded, "course. I'm just saying, and anyway, it's fine. I love you, and you love me, well at least I'm pretty damn sure you do, and we're okay right now." He brushed his hair away from his face, "it's just weird being back here, don't you think, like I can't stop thinking about all the time we spent here before, back when you were eighteen, even seventeen, and... just, wow..." Gerard trailed off, losing himself in his thoughts for a couple of moments, "did you think that when you were twenty eight you'd still be with me? What did you think when you were eighteen?"

Frank shrugged, "honestly, I didn't have a clue, I didn't really think so much about it all, but there was this one part that was so fucking determined to have the world's best life as soon as I finished school and got out of here, because this had all fucking sucked, like my teenage years were perhaps even exceptionally abysmal, but that didn't really happen did it? Being in a mental hospital until I was twenty five was definitely not something I'd planned for, still being with you at twenty eight seems like nothing in comparison."

"I'm sorry." Gerard tugged at Frank's hand.

"What for?"

"That's my fault. I fucked that up for you. If you'd never met me, or if I'd never killed myself, then you'd have never wasted so much of your life away in there, and it wasn't 'okay', because I was there with you, so don't try and bullshit me about that, Frank." Gerard sighed, biting at his fingernails, "that's one of the main reasons I'm putting the effort in to be a better person now - I just can't risk fucking things up for you, again."

Frank only shrugged in response, because technically, Gerard was right, Frank just didn't dare to say he was. Instead, he avoided it with a question. "What did you think? Did you think we'd be together now, ten years later?"

"I didn't see myself living to be any older than twenty five." Gerard said after a moment, "that had always been set in my mind, and well, I didn't see myself remaining here, as a ghost. I thought you died, and that was it - nothing of it, no heaven, no hell, no inbetween, just nothing. And then I was wrong and I knew that ten seconds after I'd died, fucking ten seconds too late, because if I'd have known that I'd stayed here, but just as a ghost, then I wouldn't have done it, I swear to fucking god I'd never have thought about it."

"So, it was always going to be like that?" Frank asked, biting down on his bottom lip tentatively, "even if things went as well as they possibly could have? I'd be twenty, and you'd be turning twenty five, and I'd see that you'd killed yourself, and that'd you'd just left me... it was always going to be like-"

"Frank, if things had gone as well as they possibly could have for another two years afterwards, I think you would have managed to change my mind about all of that. Because I love you, always have, and if things hadn't gone to shit, then I'd never want to leave. It's like now, I can't bare the thought of leaving you in any way, shape, or form, I love you."

"But it was going to be-"

"Before I met you." Gerard insisted, reaching for Frank's hand, "you changed everything. I told you, Mikey told you, I think everyone told you, I was in a much worse place before I met you."

"I can't imagine that, you were quite fucked up, even then- fuck, I don't want to imagine that." Frank curled up closer into Gerard's side.

"Honestly, it sounds fucked up, but I think my death saved our relationship, long term, at least, because you know me, old me, alive me, fucked up in the head, manic, suicidal, manipulative me, and then me, me who finally felt loss and what it was like to be wrong and so fucking sorry, and then not having my own rampant emotions helps."

"I feel like all we ever talk about is your death." Frank said after a moment, "and that's kind of weird, isn't it?"

Gerard shrugged, "well it's better than us ignoring it, isn't it? It's good that we can talk about things and that we're comfortable with it, now at least, and well, ignoring it was never going to change the fact that it happened, was it?"

"I think you grew some brain cells when you died, honestly." Frank sighed, letting Gerard wrap his arm around him as he pulled him into his side.

"I'm not quite sure how the fuck that could have worked, if I'm honest." Gerard smiled, running his fingers down Frank's back, "then again, none of this makes all that much sense in the first place, does it?"

"Yeah," Frank laughed a little, looking up at the ceiling, "we had sex in this bed the last day we spent together when you were alive," he said, perhaps a little out of the blue.

"I'm aware." Gerard added, raising his eyebrows a little.

"It was good sex, fuck, I can't even really remember what we'd gotten into that argument about..." Frank trailed off, "doesn't fucking matter though... didn't matter, and... it did, did to us then at least... and now we're here again, and-"

"And I never thought I'd set foot in my bedroom again, see you again, fuck, somehow I was just so angry that I was perfectly happy with storming out and letting our last conversation be an argument." Gerard shook his head firmly, "I hate that."

"And here we are, talking about it again. All we fucking talk about." Frank groaned a little, "I love you," he added, pressing a kiss to Gerard's lip, "I love you an awful lot."

"Love you too."

"You're good with kids, somehow, you are," Frank said, "you're good with Louis and Harry, I can tell. I think you're better with them than Pete is, but don't tell him I said that because I'd rather not get attacked by someone who's still painfully emo at age twenty eight."

"You're still emo." Gerard laughed, running a hand back through Frank's hair, "you've got your emo hair, Frankie."

"You're the fucking queen of emo, then," Frank rolled his eyes, looking up at his boyfriend and tugging at a lock of dyed black hair, "with your fucking black hair dye."

"Well, you see, technically I'm still twenty two, so I'm not 'still emo' at twenty eight-"

"You just don't want to even consider the possibility of being thirty two." Frank laughed, playing with Gerard's fingers, "you're old." He giggled a little, "thirty two's like middle aged."

"You've got to be at least forty to be middle aged, Frank, don't be fucking stupid," Gerard rolled his eyes, looking away.

"Oh, yeah, because those absolutely youthful thirty nine year olds, yeah, they're not middle aged at all-"

"Shut up." Gerard was desperately glad that he couldn't blush, being dead. "I'm not fucking middle aged-"

"Okay grandpa-"

Gerard narrowed his eyes, smirking, "that's, ghost daddy, to you."

"I am not calling you that, you can fuck right off," Frank groaned, turning away in disbelief.

"You so are," He pulled his arms around Frank, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck, "you love it, secretly, you do."

"Fuck off." Frank rolled his eyes, attempting to move out of Gerard's grasp, but he only pulled him closer, pressing what was definitely becoming a hickey into the back of his neck. "Gee, I-"

"Love it?" Gerard pulled away, giggling, "you love it- knew it."

"Please stop fucking calling yourself that... it's horrific, it really is, it's the worst thing I've ever heard-"

"Hey..." Gerard mused, "I'll stop, as long as you ask me properly, because you know, you're not making it explicitly clear what you want me to stop calling myself."

Frank groaned in disbelief, "you're an ass."

"Not calling myself that, am I?"

Frank rolled his eyes, "fine. Stop calling yourself ghost daddy."

Gerard burst into laughter, kissing Frank again, "absolutely fucking never."

-

hey pals lmao !!!!!hope u enjoyed. if u did vote && comments would be cool !!! lov u