Wishing You Were a Ghost

Land Locked Blues

Frank sells the memory-filled furniture and uses the money from that to buy new furniture with no memories attached. It takes three months before it's all gone and replaced. The LEGO sets get given to the kids in his apartment building, and the comics get sold to a second hand store.

He falls into a groove. He adjusts. He heals.

Mostly.

Most days, he gets by just fine. He finds a medication that works for him, and he keeps seeing Emily who helps him navigate all of the nasty details of his inner turmoil.

Work is good. He manages to even things out there as well. No more working himself to the bone so that he just comes home, eats leftovers and passes out on the couch. He works regular, full time hours. Not quite nine to five, a bit more varied than that, but he still gets two days off a week.

Which, he's proud to say, he does not spend drinking. Not anymore, anyway. He did, for a bit, post rebound. There was a period of deepened depression following that glaring mistake in which he drank to the point of... Well, excess seems like too kind of a word, actually. But the point is that he's not doing that anymore.

He backs off on the booze (after James and Mikey essentially stage an intervention), and he gets to a point of stasis. Eventually.

It's about six months after the hook-up that the day comes when Frank walks into his apartment after work, and opens his mouth to shout a, "Hey, Gee, I'm ho-"

Here, suddenly bright and far too clear in front of him, is a habit that he thought he'd outgrown. Months ago. Over a year now. Words he hasn't slipped up and spoken in what feels like forever, and while he felt like he'd finally shifted into acceptance, he's hit with a rush of agonizing depression that steals his breath.

There isn't even anything to remind him of Gerard in the house. Not anymore. Frank has done everything in his fucking power to erase every trace of him. It took him so fucking long. He felt like he was stable, but it all comes crashing down over him like the weight of the world falling onto his shoulders.

Frank is silent as he sets down his bag, takes off his shoes, and locks the door behind him. He takes in the little kitchenette set; a small table with only two chairs, not four. It's round, not square, and it's a white washed 'distressed' sort of paint job, not black.

He looks at the couch, dark purple wrapped around overstuffed arms and cushions, not the dark red boxy thing from IKEA. The coffee table is hardly more than driftwood drilled to a sturdy base that Frank bought off of some guy on Facebook who made it by hand. It is a far cry from the glass-topped monster that once sat there.

The bed in his bedroom no longer has black slats for a headboard, instead it's a solid grey that matches the footboard as well. The dressers are sleek, and black, not antiques, and the single nightstand is no longer part of a matching set.

Everything in the house is different, and all of the things that Gerard had bought him over the years are gone.

Except for his record player and a few of the vinyls in the bin that houses them.

He crosses to it, feeling numb as he sifts through the sleeves to find one of those lingering traces of Gerard that he just hasn't been able to force himself to get rid of.

The familiar artwork stares up at him. Shades of beige and cream making up a row of apartment buildings, with a bright red orb in the sky. Frank and Gerard used to have playful arguments about whether it was the sun or the moon.

Gerard argued that it was the sun. Something about how beige is on the 'yellow' side of things, and if it were the moon, things would be much darker, probably grey instead. Frank disagreed and said it had to be the moon if for no other reason than it just fits the overall vibe, and then Gerard would argue that the album is a good mix of upbeat pieces and slower songs. Frank's rebuttal was always, "Okay, but how many of them are actually happy?", which he thought was fair.