Frank had been all kinds of reluctant when it came to the matter of staying the night, but Ray was older, definitely wiser, and somehow, just in a way, still Frank's teacher, and still someone the younger man felt he should look up to and listen to, and with a huffy, teenage shake of his head and sigh, Frank had agreed to stay in the spare room and allow Ray to watch in far too much concern for anyone's good, as Frank refused to say anything of any substance.

Because despite the very obvious mess that Frank found himself in, he still did indeed reckon he really was okay, and that this all would pass: one way or another, and at this point, Frank liked to say he was little but indifferent, but in reality, Frank was little but an expert at lying to himself, and Ray Toro was a world class expert at seeing through it all.

Ray had known Frank since the younger was seventeen, after all.

Frank felt sort of awkward, uncomfortable even, just like he didn't belong, in a house, in a world like this, but Ray was all kinds of stubborn, and Frank was all kinds of welcome, even if he didn't dare admit it, that he had something to think and complain about besides the absence of the ex-boyfriend who had been dead something like ten years now.

Ray was of course just a little concerned for Frank's mental health, because well, with the subject matter and what he'd told him, who wouldn't be? But besides this, Frank seemed absolutely fine, and Ray found himself stumped, fucking stuck on the matter, and he reckoned that this wasn't something he could just discuss with his wife, Christa, at the dinner table, as he often did when he found himself in need of advice.

He reckoned he owed Frank privacy at the very least, and he made certain of the fact that he'd stick to that promise, and would tell Christa the truth, to an extent; that Frank was an old student of his, and they were close, and Frank needed somewhere to stay tonight, or perhaps for a few nights, because Ray had no idea just how long it would be until he could let Frank leave through that door again and not shake with anxiety at the notion of never seeing him again.

Because with the state of mind that Frank was in, it really felt like a possibility: a very real possibility, in fact, and there was little way out of that one.

But Frank was sane, or at least, he seemed so, because Frank was Frank: older but still the same person Ray had known ten years ago, because sure, he'd matured, of course he had - time changed people, after all, but he was inherently the same person, and Ray felt that even as the twenty eight year old stood in the corner of the kitchen, leaned up against the cabinet, his whole body shaking, and his whole head vacant, and fixated upon matters of that certain ex-boyfriend, as Ray stood in the next room, attempting to explain this to a rather tired and flustered looking Christa Toro.

Frank jumped a little as the kitchen door opened, and Ray lead his wife inside, and from the somewhat concerned look in her eyes, he reckoned that Ray had made some attempt regarding an explanation regarding the guy in her kitchen. "This is Frank; it's just a night, or a few, and it's important, isn't it, Frank?"

Frank looked between Ray and his wife, raising his eyebrows a little, "I'll go if you want, it's nothing, but Ray's... Ray, and..."

"He's not going to let you go, let alone give up on you." Christa finished for him with something like a smile, and well, that wasn't exactly what Frank was expecting. "No more than a few nights though, look, I'm guessing this is private, but still, I don't want the life of a student of yours from ten years ago ruining ours."

"It won't." Ray promised her, sincerity in his eyes, and there was somewhat of an unspoken conversation, and a kind of love and trust that Frank reckoned he'd never reach, not with anyone, and especially not with Gerard.

Sure, Frank loved Gerard, or something... something like that, but Frank wasn't stupid; he did stupid things, for sure, but he was by no means a stupid person.

"Okay then, Ray, can you go down the road to the shop, we need milk?" Ray glanced between Christa and Frank with a certain hesitance in his gaze. "Come on, for god's sake, I'm not going to kill him, and anyway, he's an adult; you don't need to babysit him."

"I'm not-" Ray's protests soon ground to a halt, shaking his head, before grabbing his keys from the countertop and waving to the two of them as he made his way to the front door on his quest for milk.

"So..." Christa drew out the silence as the front door slammed, turning to Frank, and flashing him a genuine kind of smile, "what exactly is it with you two? Not many students still know, let alone are close to music teachers from a decade ago?"

"He was always the nicest person to me." Frank admitted, blushing a little, because dear god, it did sound awfully pathetic, and of course, it wasn't like the memories of his high school life were something the twenty eight year old particularly wanted to dwell on. "He let me stay in his classroom at lunch time and protected me from these bullies, and he was always accepting of my sexuality and he just really, genuinely cared, and you don't get that from a lot of teachers."

Christa pulled her lips up into a smile, "no you don't. But of course, Ray isn't a lot of people, and I must admit that I'm a lucky woman. So he was... what? Twenty five?"

"Yeah." Frank nodded, smiling a little, "he was a much better twenty five year old than I ever was."

"Why? What kind of a twenty five year old were you? What happened when you were twenty five?" Christa asked, and Frank was leading himself into all kinds of trouble here, but she smiled like she meant it, and Frank knew exactly why Ray had fallen for her, because if he was into girls, he totally would have too.

"When I was twenty five... fuck..." Frank shook his head, "I got out of a mental hospital when I was twenty five," Frank paused, wondering if he should have regretted telling her something like this, but fuck it, because it was definitely too late now, "I'm twenty eight now."

"Why were you in there?" Christa asked, trying to be as respectful as possible, because she could definitely see that this was somewhat of a touch subject for Frank. "If you don't mind telling me, that is."

Frank sighed shaking his head, almost in disbelief of himself, "schizophrenia," and perhaps, at this point, he reckoned he said it all too casually too.

"I'm sorry-"

"And this is the point where I'm supposed to reassure you and telling you that I'm fine and totally sane now, but I don't know if I am; I honestly don't know, and my head's a mess, and my head's always going to be a mess, and that's something I'm going to have to deal with, but just can't."

-

Frank lay awake in a spare bed in a spare room for what felt like hours, because he felt scared and he felt alone, and he felt like running back home, not even to his apartment, but home, to Jersey, to the woods, to the mess that had started this all, but he daren't play games with fate, especially when he was already this fucked.

With time, Frank resorted to sitting up in bed, and fumbling behind him for a light switch, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and lighting one, because Frank had become quite the addict within recent years, and it definitely wasn't his worst habit, to say the least.

Because if Frank had to pin down a 'worst' habit, it had to be the inability to get over one pretty boy from ten years ago, who had just happened to have fucked him up a little, in all senses of that word.

Goddamn, Frank had lost his virginity to Gerard, and that was horrible kind of one thirty eight am realisation, because it was simultaneously too early and too late for this, and Frank felt something like sick, but found himself without the motivation to move out of bed, and get himself some water or something, or anything really, and he found himself settling to compensate himself with starring at bleak, empty, peach coloured walls of a bedroom that clearly hadn't been used in years.

Frank wondered what his life would have turned out like if he'd never met Gerard, if he'd just been normal, perhaps even if his mother had never died, and he'd just been a normal, 'happy' guy; he reckoned then he'd be nothing, except perhaps then the one with the spare room - never used with peach walls, but Frank didn't want that at all.

Because as much as they had destroyed him, Frank knew that it was the vices that had made something significant out of short, dark haired boy from New Jersey.

Of course there was the parallel universe pipedream possibility of perhaps the peach coloured, never used spare room belonging not to Frank, but to Gerard too, because maybe in this version of reality, Frank had been happy with his mum still alive, and Gerard had been as happy too, and perhaps the two had met, but perhaps things had been smoother, and perhaps they would have moved to New York together, as soon as Frank made it out of high school, and perhaps they'd sit in that shitty Starbucks together, but Frank didn't know if he wanted that.

In reality, Frank didn't know what he wanted; his mind constructed of little more than the short term and temporary, 'in the moment' kind of thoughts, because Frank didn't live for the future, because quite honestly, Frank didn't see himself with much of a future, and as depressing as it was, he couldn't shake the truth that it seemed to hold.

Here he was: alone, and here he was, with something like three, at best, friends, and not even the ghost of his dead ex-boyfriend haunting him and ruining his life too; fuck, he really was pathetic, and right then, come one fifty one am, Frank filled his lungs with nicotine and considering stopping breathing all together.

Because what difference would it make?

Sure, it'd make somewhat of a difference, but nothing significant; nothing that should be worth anybody's time for that matter, and perhaps even the more he thought, the more it seemed to make sense.

He'd make it quick; he'd make it silent, he'd leave because Ray and Christa didn't deserve to clean up this kind of mess, and he'd make it back home, and he'd make it to the balcony and he'd sort things from there, and he'd make it right; he'd make amends to himself and the broken future and the ache inside his heart.

Because no matter how much Christa Toro smiled, there was no questioning the fact that she'd prefer to be alone in this house with Ray, and no matter how much Ray Toro was stubborn, there was no questioning that he wished to be rid of this mess in the first place, and no matter how much Brendon listened when he was a little less intoxicated, there was no questioning that he felt Frank was the eternal third wheel, weighing him and Ryan down, and no matter how much Ryan seemed to care, Frank couldn't quite trick himself that he really did.

And no matter how many years Frank had spent fucking up his life, and then, in consequence, no matter how many years Frank had spent in some sort of feeble state of attempting to rectify that, he was still always the same.

Pathetic, hopeless, useless.

"I'm useless." He told himself aloud, his words leaving a horrible kind of sting in the silence. "No one wants me here; no one loves me, no one cares."

And silence, and Frank almost half expected some sort of confirmation or reply of some sort, but nothing, and Frank found himself getting to his feet, only to find a hand on his shoulder: cold.

"I thought that too."

-

It was a life of routine: a world of waking up every morning, eating breakfast, talking to people you didn't like, sitting alone, talking to more people you didn't like, eating something else, sitting alone for a while longer, and eating dinner, before sitting alone until you eventually fell asleep, and it had been Frank's whole world for years.

And even if he'd been away from it for years too, it was still always there, at the back of his head; the room he didn't have the key to, and the man with the half hearted smile, and the pills in their multitudes.

It was gone, but not really, just locked away in the corner of Frank's mind, ready to be accessed, perhaps triggered at anytime, and there was simply no time greater than the moment in which Frank felt unfamiliar, but of course, always familiar fingertips on his shoulder.

Because in that very moment, twenty eight year old Frank Iero didn't feel alive or real at all, and even in comparison to the ghost behind him, he felt like the one who might fade away.

And perhaps Frank was simply just nowhere near as happy and relieved to see Gerard as he should have been, and perhaps that was little more than a result of the fact that although his body was in Ray Toro's spare bedroom, his head was back there, in a world he had no control of, in a world he had no control of himself in.

And Frank even felt like crying, but he didn't, perhaps he couldn't, perhaps it didn't matter, perhaps it was all an over exaggerated mess, but whatever it was, the whole damn world felt like it was down to those fingertips on his shoulder and the heaviness of his heart, and how this was all unarguably the fault of the man behind the fingertips.

"Fuck off." Frank hadn't even expected the words to leave his lips, and for him to make the same mistake again, but this didn't feel the slightest bit real at all, and Frank felt like it was two in the morning on a different day, and his fist was about to connect with the face of the red haired man who stood behind him, flickering a little as the dodgy light bulb varied the levels of light in the room from time to time.

"No." Gerard was something like adamant this time; something like adamant to go against Frank's every wish, because he could never just be nice and make things easy for him, could he?

"You were more than happy to before-" Frank protested, perhaps even just for the sake of it, perhaps just to prove a point, because he knew that deep down inside, he wanted to cling tight to Gerard and never ever let go, never again.

"Well, I've realised how wrong I was now, and how I really can't leave you alone, can I?" Gerard's lips pulled up into a small smile as he stepped closer to Frank, looking just a little more real, just a slightly more believable illusion, and if Frank squinted a little, just perhaps he could trick himself into thinking that everything was and would be okay.

"I'm not a baby, Gerard, I'm older than you." Frank let out a sigh, reaching for Gerard's hand as he lost all self control and gripping it tight.

The 'younger' man smiled, only taking his eyes off their hands after a good few moments of complacent staring, "you're my baby," he added with something awfully reminiscent of a smirk, and Frank was just too relieved to slap him, because maybe he was wrong, and maybe this was everything, and maybe his head was okay, but every time he blinked he kept catching flashes of hospital walls and faces he didn't recognise, "and you're only technically older than me."

"Because, oh yeah, you'd be thirty two, right now, wouldn't you?" Frank raised his eyebrows at that, leaning his head against Gerard's chest, "you'd like that wouldn't you?"

"God no." He trailed off, shaking his head, and clutching Frank's hand tighter as he led him back to the bed, and the two lay down with their sides pressed together.

"Why did you go? What did you do? I'm so confused, Gerard, I... please just say something that makes some sense-"

"I love you." And Gerard was like a punch to the face, and one that the puncher had really meant, and therefore hurt twice as much.

"That doesn't make sense at all, Gerard-"

"Of course it does, it's the simplest thing, and you know that Frankie, it's what we are: lovers, it's what we're made for, isn't it? You're the cute one and I'm the hot one, and we're Gee and Frankie, and-"

"And you're dead-"

"And you're bitter." Gerard shook his head in disbelief, grinning a little as the twenty eight year old began to seriously consider slapping him across the face. "I'm sorry, I can't deal with this, I can't deal with you, because I was okay, but with us talking all the time, and it's like this again, and it's just us, and I... I can't help falling for you, and you can't help hating me, and I'm scared of everything, but especially the truth."

And silence, a prolonged silence, and Gerard even began to wonder if Frank had fallen asleep or something, which would most certainly be the worst response he'd ever received from a heartfelt confession, but Frank didn't have much competition; Gerard was practically anything but the heartfelt confession type.

"Why do I want to forgive you?" And when Frank broke the silence, it was with a genuine question.

And Gerard was just a little stumped, "because you love me too," and it was pushing it, but Gerard was already metaphorically on his hands and knees for Frank, and perhaps he doing all he could to make that a little less metaphorical and a little more literal.

"Do you have any dignity at all?"

"Absolutely not."

And something like a smile, as Frank buried his head into the pillow, and neither of the two men said another word.

-

hey pals lmao im dead im dying but i have a week off school now so it's like fine and i'm probably going to go sleep for something like 3 days lmao anyway votes and comments would be cool because i am so very tired and i love you all lots <3