Wintertime (Frerard, Sequel to Summertime)

28: The Word Fuck Appears Over 50 Times In This Chapter

"Me?" Gerard raised his eyebrows, as if offended, "what did I do? What do you mean? I've done loads of things, I've done a lot more art recently, so yeah, art, walk around the house, look at your kids, cute kids by the way, Frank, not in your house, in our house, although it's not really our house we just kind of broke into it and nobody's kicked us out yet-"

"Gerard, what the fuck did you do? Did you fucking fake your death or some fucking shit because I swear to God, I will kill you for real now?!" Mikey yelled, getting to his feet and glaring Gerard down, wondering if he'd ever been angrier in his life, but in exactly the same way, never more relieved to see anyone, because this was Gerard, this was his older brother, here, in front of him, again.

"No." Gerard sighed out, "that would have been impressive, but I did actually die. I'm a ghost."

"Ghosts aren't fucking real, Gerard, and you look just as real, just as fucking alive as Frank does!" Mikey went onto exclaim, pointing frantically between the two of them, but generally unable to believe just what the fuck was going on.

"I didn't think they were real either, you know, until I was one." Gerard let out a sigh, looking up at his brother, "I could look less 'real' if you want," he added, before concentrating and causing his form to flicker and fade out of existence a little, before materialising properly again.

"What the... fuck... fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-"

"It's true." Frank let out a sigh, putting his hand on Mikey's shoulder, "and I wanted to kill him at first, of course I did, and I didn't believe him and I just wanted him to leave me alone, but that's really the last thing I want. He's like connected to me, or some shit, I don't understand it, neither does he, but he's better at pretending to than I am-"

"So that's it...? Dying? You come back as a ghost?" Mikey exclaimed, his eyes widening, his thoughts racing, "what's it like? What the fuck happens?"

Gerard shrugged, "not always. I'm just connected to Frank, anchored down to this 'dimension', so to speak, some people, they go off to wherever you go from here, and that I don't know, but..." he let out a sigh, looking down, "I was in my body and then I closed my eyes, and it was a good two minutes of nothing at all, before I open my eyes because there's this feeling of weightlessness: this feeling of nothing at all, and I'm drifting away from my body- fuck... fucking stood there, and I can't move, I can't do anything but watch as Frank finds my body... and it was the worst fucking thing I ever-" It was then that Gerard really looked up and met his brother in the eye, "I'm sorry, I really fucking am, I-"

Mikey didn't even let him finish before he stepped forward and pulled him into a hug, squeezing so tight as if he was scared he might disappear again.

"Fuck," Mikey commented, "I didn't expect you, to be like solid, I-"

"I'm not always, but I can be. It's complicated, but when I'm closer to Frank and my body, like the actual thing in the ground in the graveyard, the more control I have over my state of being. When we were back in New York no one could see me besides Frank unless I focused really hard whilst we were holding hands or something."

"Wait... so... you're..." Mikey glanced between the two, "he's dead, but you're still dating him?"

"Y-yeah..." Frank trailed off, "it's not that weird, I mean... it's just... Gerard, but he's maybe a tiny bit less obnoxious now and he doesn't sleep anymore, and sometimes he just disintegrates, which is fucking lovely."

"So..." Mikey trailed off, "if... when you die... you-"

"You're talking about mum, aren't you?" Gerard let out a sigh, "I've been looking for here all over this place, but I've not had any luck, we could try other places, but I doubt she's still here somewhere."