"My dad," he said quietly. "Mikey doesn't know, I think he was too young to remember, but Dad was really in to that type of stuff. Guns. War. But not in the bad way, he was just patriotic, ya' know? My grandpa, evidently, was in some war; Mikey is named after him. My dad wanted me and Mikey both to go to military school."
"So why didn't you?"
"Because I- well, I never wanted to even think about military school or anything like that. Even when I was younger I think I knew I just wanted to do something creative. Something that was productive, not destructive."
"Why did guns stick, then?"
"Same reason piano stuck when my grandma's health started declining; something to remember someone I care about by."
I nodded. "That makes sense, I guess..."
"I'm glad it does."
We fell into silence again, and I found myself just looking at Gerard.
He was annoyingly attractive, sitting on the bathroom floor with his legs pulled up to his chest, spilling his heart out to me. He looked back at me for a few seconds, and then rested his forehead on his knees, lips parting in a light sigh, strands of black hair framing his face.
"Another thing I guess I should tell you, is that I haven't been taking my pills."
I leaned back, tilting my head, too, staring at the ceiling. "What pills?" I asked, already guessing.
"Depression."
I closed my eyes, and let out a slow breath, swallowing the sadness that was clogging my throat.
"Okay." I looked over at him. "Why'd you stop taking the pills, Gerard? Mikey told me a while ago, but I want to hear it from you. It's been a while and I want to hear your opinion on it."
"Well, at first I thought I just stopped because I thought I didn't need them. Because- because you made me happy," he said quietly.
"You thought?"
"Well, yeah. But then other stuff started happening, that made me realize that the medicine wasn't helping anyway."
"It wasn't?"
"No. It made me too tired. I wanted to sleep all the time. It made me dizzy. Gave me headaches."
"Then maybe you could talk to someone about switching medications?"
Gerard stared at the empty space across from him. "No. Switching medication is admitting that I'm still a failure. Do you know how hard it was to admit I was even depressed in the first place, Frank? I can't- I can't tell people that I'm still too weak to survive on my own. I can't tell them that the chemicals that are supposed to help the ones in my head aren't working and that I need different ones."
"If it helps," I said quietly, scooting closer to him. "I've never told anyone about my depression."
"No one?" he asked, his fingers finding mine.
"No one but you," I confirmed, squeezing his hand. "I'm not even, like, officially diagnosed as being depressed. I guess I should take pills for it or something, get some help or something, but... I dunno. My mom would probably just yell at me if I told her, and if she didn't, she'd probably just worry way too fucking much. And anyway, pills cost money that I really do not have."
Gerard didn't say anything and I guessed he agreed.
"You should probably know that there's something wrong with my eating habits, too," he told me.
I closed my eyes for a second or two, leaning back and resting my head against the wall. "I kind of figured about that. You and your 'just a coffee, please,' thing is starting to worry me even more than it did when we first met."
Chapter Twenty - Frank's POV
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