october challenge | frerard | ✔️

one - flowers

one: back from the dead

"Gerard, I don't think this is gonna work," Mikey mumbled, knowing full-well that it didn't have to.

"It's been two days, Mikes," Gerard sniffled and sat back on his feet. His thumb played with the silver engagement ring on his right hand. Two days since the burial, and five since Frank's death. "It has to work. She said it'd work."

"Not everything that Elena says works, Gee."

"It's gonna work, Mikey," Gerard whispered confidently. "I don't even think he was dead, to begin with."

Mikey's breath caught in his throat, and he hid a smile behind his usual poker-face. He let his mousy brown hair fall into his face and adjusted his fake glasses on the bridge of his nose. He only wore them around family, and he'd already made some shit up about getting contacts soon to replace them.

He was far from needing contacts.

Gerard placed the flowers he'd brought on Frank's grave and took out the candle and the herbs he'd need. He bit his lip, reconsidering, but he finally settled, resolute in his decision.

"Gee," Mikey prodded. "If... if you don't hear anything, it doesn't mean he's alive, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Gerard brushed it off. "I'm not expecting to, anyways. I don't actually believe you can talk to people after they've died. When you die, you're... gone, you know?"

Mikey nodded. "Yeah. I know. Look, Gee, there's something I've gotta tell you, okay?"

"Sure."

Mikey hesitates, un knowing whether to go through with the plan or not. He'd promised Frank he would, but now that it was actually gonna happen, he was very afraid. There were just too many things that could go wrong.

"Frank's not... Frank's not dead."

Gerard clutched the candle and herbs in his hand more tightly and bit his lip. "Mikey, stop--"

"No, Gee. I wouldn't lie to you. He's not dead, he just... needed to seem that way for everyone in our families. Ray knows too, but that's it. And we're both... um... like also how Frank is, but we didn't pretend to die."

"Why the fuck would Frank fake his death, Mikes? Stop bullshitting me."

Mikey closed his eyes and rolled them when he heard a faint chuckle. He sat back on his arse in the finely cut grass and crossed his legs and arms in frustration. He knew Gerard couldn't hear the faint laugh though, and this was confirmed when Gerard was still facing him, obviously upset.

"Gee, you've gotta believe me--"

"Why the hell?"

"Because I'm your brother and you should trust me, and Ray knows too, and--"

"Mikey, Frank wouldn't lie to me like that, he--"

"Frank's a vampire, Gerard."

Silence finally settled around them and Gerard looked away, awkwardly dropping the candle and herbs and settling back on his arse as Mikey had. His expression was unreadable, and Mikey was afraid he'd ruined everything.

Gerard wasn't a devout Christian like he and Mikey's parents were, however, the two boys had always grown up knowing vampires to be evil creatures. Gerard had gone through a phase where he was infatuated with them right around age eleven, and as soon as the first school library book about vampires came home, they made him return it without even reading it. He'd been severely disappointed but had promised to never read anything about the so-called 'foul creatures of Satan' ever again.