Wintertime (Frerard, Sequel to Summertime)

8: Brendon Urie's Instagram Theme Aesthetic

"Since I started to be sorry." Gerard added, several moments later, laying beside Frank as he did so. "Just tell me, Frankie."

"You tell me." Frank insisted, inhaling sharply as he did so.

"Tell you what?" Gerard asked, genuinely clueless, and genuinely beautiful, even for a person who'd been dead ten fucking years.

"Why you did it. Tell me what really went through your head that day, because it's always my perspective a million times over; that's all I think about, I could recite it to you, every little thought and feeling, but from you, from you there was little more than a soppily concocted paragraph, a lacklustre apology that I thought I'd never receive closure from, and I won't, but I... need to know, Gerard, tell me why."

Gerard turned away from Frank momentarily, biting his lip as he did so, because Gerard himself didn't linger too much upon this topic either. "It's... it's complicated."

"Isn't everything?" Frank snapped back instantly. "This isn't a Facebook relationship status, Gerard."

"I know." Gerard shook his head, finally turning back to Frank, but not quite meeting his gaze as he continued to speak. "I was scared: I always am, and always have been, but then it was different, because I was such a mess of teenage angst and fucked up feelings and knots that never got untied: I was all flaws with no strengths, and I was pretty, I am pretty, but that's all I have going for me, and I struggle to see how you could see anything worth dating in me, but that's a stupid question, and I... I had built up this persona, this 'Gerard', this guy that was too cool and too tough and too good for anyone, and then there was this boy called Frankie who fucked that all up."

"You hated me when we first met that day in the forest, in the summertime, didn't you?" Frank asked, exhaling sharply as he did so.

"I wanted you to think I did." Gerard shook his head once more. "That was the very day I fell for you: it was like falling, it was like I'd hit the end of the road, the end of the cliff, and you were the freefall, and it was that for so long, and I'd embraced it after all, but that day, I woke up, and everything was different, it was over: it was the bottom, and I knew it, and in a way, I think you did too. I wanted to stay, but that argument, inevitable, of course, was what sealed it, but it's okay now, we're together again now: seems like I just can't get away from you, no matter how hard I try." Gerard cracked something like a smile as he spoke.

"You know you didn't have to, Gerard." Frank continued, not as satisfied with the response he'd received as Gerard would have liked him to be. "You could have stayed alive, we could have had that argument, and you could have gone out to the forest and smoked and had some time alone, and I could go look for you and we could talk things over and we could kiss, and we'd be good and it'd be okay-"

"This is the best option, I assure you, Frankie." Gerard let out a sigh, raising his eyebrows a little as he did so. "This is keeping me to stay by your side, because with me alive, and me being me, and you being you, I can promise you that we would not have lasted ten years."

"Eleven." Frank corrected him.

"Eleven." Gerard paused. "It wouldn't have happened."

"So are you saying you didn't love me?-"

"No-"

"Then what are you saying?" Frank had quickly lost all of his patience, and Gerard was more than well aware of it.

"You wouldn't understand-"

"What because I'm just a kid- well, guess what? I'm not a kid anymore: I'm twenty eight, I'm six years older than you, and you need to accept that, and you need accept what you did instead of just rewriting it off as some poetic teen romance bullshit."