Wintertime (Frerard, Sequel to Summertime)

31: this whole chapter is literally a conversation wow lmao

"You-"

"And then he doesn't know what the fuck to think when this guy suddenly comes home and his mum has to introduce him to his father because he can't remember who the fuck this guy is, because he means nothing in his life and in all of this, but he pretends to and he spends too much time with mum and then I had to deal with the rest of the mess, because mum had dad. And I had to worry about Frank who clearly was never going to get better and stayed at our house for weeks and wouldn't stop crying at night and barely left the house and nearly dropped out of high school because he lost the boy he was in love with. I had to go to my brother's funeral, at age eighteen and I had to watch my mother cry, I had to watch my brother being put into the ground, and worst of all I had to watch my father pull some bullshit and act like he'd ever given a single shit. I had to watch him stick around, I had to learn to hate him in such a short space of time, and then I had to watch as Frank got worse and worse to the point where we had to do something about it, and then I had to watch my best friend go to live in a mental hospital. I had to listen to my father lying to me and telling me that it was all okay, and I had to listen to my mother believing him. And on top of all of that, I'd lost my brother, my brother, you, fucking dead, dead, and you'd barely written a paragraph of a suicide note, fuck, it was like you hadn't even cared, and I had to deal with people at school, people you'd known, people like Bert and that girl you'd dated once when you were like sixteen, coming up to me and asking me why you'd done it, and I had to tell them that not even I had the slightest fucking clue in the world. And I'd tell them I was sorry, and you fucking know why I did that? Because it all felt like my fault? Because maybe I'd pushed you too far, because we hadn't been on great terms, but you know what? You wrote a paragraph. And I believed I'd never know. I believed that this would be my life forever, and then you fucking popped up out of nowhere, and fucking laughed at me for fainting."

"I'm so sorry, I-"

"So fucking tell me that 'it wasn't that bad', I dare you, Gerard."

Gerard paused for a moment, looking down, deep in an odd kind of thought of a matter he'd thought about regularly, but never quite so directly. There was something undeniably odd about this whole ordeal, about having the aftermath of your death described to you in such detail. It was perhaps something that never should happen, and Gerard could certainly say he was feeling the effects of it.

"So people cared?" He asked after a moment, and ended up sounding more than a little ridiculous as he did so.

"Fuck, Gerard, of course people cared, are you being fucking serious right now?" Mikey exclaimed, looking at his brother in disbelief: forever unable to unravel his trains of thought, and really even get a vague idea as to how his head worked.

"I just..." He trailed off, picking at the material of his jeans, "I know, I mean, you and Frank like.... and mum... and like... you were upset and I... I mean like... other people like people I barely even knew or like vague friends or like... Bert... people like Bert cared?"

"Yes." Mikey looked at his brother in disbelief. "Of course people cared."

Gerard sat there for a moment, just in silence, just in thought, direct thought and the pure gravity of it all. "People cared." He repeated, more to himself than to Mikey.

"Yeah..." Mikey trailed off, pulling his gaze away from his brother and taking a moment to wonder just what the hell went on inside Gerard's head on a regular basis.

"Fucking funny how people only care when you're dead, isn't it?" Gerard's tone suddenly grew rather snappy.

"That's not strictly true-"