"Gerard, what's going on?" Frank grabbed his boyfriend by the wrist; the two outside Frank's old house, just across the street, and Gerard appeared to be shaking all over, having stormed out of the place only minutes prior, leaving Frank to apologise awkwardly to an old lady he barely knew before running after and attempting to make sense of his boyfriend.
Gerard groaned, turning away from Frank, "we shouldn't have gone here." He cursed, glancing back towards the place, and perhaps getting a glimpse of the figure he'd seen before Beth had appeared, "I should have listened," he added, cursing, "it doesn't make sense though... this place... it's just... it's bad, everything here is bad."
"Well it's not like the home I got abused in is going to be a happy place, is it? What did you expect? I didn't expect much." Frank continued to hold onto Gerard, pulling him closer and pressing a kiss to his lips, "it's not like I can help you if you don't explain - I can't see the things you can, and anyway... I thought you said you couldn't see anything for some reason... or were you lying to me?"
"I wasn't lying." Gerard let out a sigh, pulling Frank into his chest, "I just found out why I couldn't see anything else inside that place, I just found out why we shouldn't have gone inside. I saw something in that room. Something horrible."
"What did you see?" Frank pressed on: his tone insistent.
"You ought to know, but I..." Gerard choked out, still shaking a little, "this one, it was just... far more vivid than the rest of the memories and shit I can see... prominent, stronger, and it was effecting your reality too-"
"What do you mean, Gerard?" Frank exclaimed, still holding on tight to his boyfriend's wrist.
"The ceiling fan just wouldn't turn on, but there's nothing physically wrong with it." Gerard reminded Frank, "I could see very fucking easily why it doesn't work," he continued, locking eyes with Frank, "someone had hung themself from there, and I could feel it, that's what's blocking everything else out, or at least I think so. I can never be sure, but we shouldn't have been there in the first place. The woman I saw outside that I thought was talking to someone else, I think she was talking to me."
"What do you mean, Gerard, what the fuck do you-"
"She looked at you, Frank, she looked at you from across the street and told me very specifically not to bring you in there, but I did, didn't I and now I..." Gerard shook his head, her exact words perhaps permanently imprinted upon his brain, "now I don't know what's gonna happen, but I feel like it's not gonna be good."
"Who was it hanging from the ceiling fan?" Frank soon lost all of his patience, his tone growing stern as he met Gerard's eyes.
"Frank..." Gerard trailed off, biting his lip, unsure of how to break this gently or if there was anyway to do so at all. "It was your father."
Frank stood there in silence for a moment, frozen as if he hadn't quite heard Gerard, but from the look in his eyes, Gerard was very certain he had.
"She said... Beth said..." his tone suddenly grew very quiet as he gestured back to the house, "she said... liver failure... why would she lie?"
"I don't know, Frank, I'm sorry, I don't know, I don't know anything at all, I just saw him there." Gerard let out a sigh, "I can try to focus, I mean there must be some more parts of him connected to this town, his grave perhaps? There's lots of things we can try, but I don't know, I don't know if they'll work, I just-"
"He hung himself the night before my birthday." Frank interjected, his voice shaking a little, "that can't mean nothing... it's my fault, isn't it? I fucked things up-"
"Frank, he fucking abused you and you're gonna-" Gerard cut himself off, simply pulling Frank into his chest, "nothing's your fault," he whispered, changing his approach, "and nothing's for certain. I can promise you that."
"I don't even like him," Frank protested, his words half muffled into Gerard's shirt, "I just... no one should do that, no one... killing yourself, I just... there's always something, someone to live for."
"I'm sorry." Gerard choked out, both sharing the knowledge that suddenly everything was just a whole lot more about Gerard than it was his father. "I'm really sorry."
"At least you're still here, but he... he..." Frank choked out, "there's no goodbye, no apology, no happy ever after, none of that, because I had this stupid idea in my stupid fucking head that maybe he would have changed, gotten better, maybe married another woman, a nice woman, and maybe he would be happy, a nice guy, and maybe we could make it up again. I just wanted everything to be okay, but that's too much to ask, I know that, obviously and... I..."
"He's not stuck drifting, though, he's not connected to someone or something," Gerard began, pulling away from Frank a little, "he's moved on, to wherever's on from here, and he's not stuck relieving memories, in some sort of hell that's half here and and half there. The sidelines aren't a nice place to me, Frank, I'm one of the lucky ones in that you're so understanding, and that we're here, and that I didn't get cremated, because then I really would just be stuck watching you forever. Some people stay like that, some can never contact the person they're connected to. It took me years, remember?"
Frank nodded, grasping his hand. "I know, I just... I..." he turned, glancing over at the forest and the path he'd travelled down far too many times as a teenager, "you know how you can see memories?" Gerard nodded, "can we go to the place we first met? And can you describe it in great detail because I want to relive that one."
"Do you really?" Gerard raised his eyebrows, "I insulted the fuck out of you, I think we even hated each other-"
"We never hated each other, just hormones, we were teenagers, and stupid ones at that." Frank commented, "and well, that clearing, I haven't been there in too long, it's always been a special place for me, until you intruded and fucked my life up but let's ignore that for a moment."
"I'm sorry." Gerard joked, putting his arm around Frank as they headed towards the path, the taller man doing everything he could to focus on anything but the man holding the bleeding body of a woman, carrying her down the very same path they were headed.
-
Gerard's gaze remained fixated upon the man walking just a few paces before them, whereas Frank seemed to drift of in oblivion, his hand in Gerard's, his feet against the forest floor, but his mind definitely elsewhere.
The forest had hardly changed in ten or so years, only the trees seeming to curl in, and more leaves on the floor left the forest with that forever autumnal feeling, that only seemed to catch Gerard's attention then, because he'd known this wasn't normal, everyone had known that, but he'd never really considered the colours of leaves in a forest until now.
Because it was very obviously not naturally like that, and Gerard came to wonder if there was some other presence around here keeping it as such, in fact, it was almost as if the forest itself had been frozen and preserved for entirety, just like this in Autumn, destined to always be as such.
Gerard found himself stumped as to quite what he was supposed to think of it, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that nothing in Jersey was as it seemed, and the forest was most certainly no exception, and with that, his curiosity seemed to grow, as he wondered what lay underneath the surface of the rest of the world he knew so well; he wondered what was of his own home, he wondered what was of the graveyard especially: hundreds, thousands even of spirits, of souls, of memories, of worlds and lives forgotten and lost, pushed six feet under ground as if that would wipe them completely off Earth, but it wasn't like that.
Gerard knew as he watched the man hold the woman's body that it really wasn't like that.
Gerard knew as they too walked towards the clearing that this was something, that this was everything, and in that in the same way, he most definitely could not tell Frank that a man was about to bury a woman in this very forest. Of course, as to quite who they were, Gerard was uncertain, but it was just blatantly obvious that they were indeed important, significant somehow, and he saw the spirits more vividly now, the forest light seeming to reflect off them, and he knew that in this clearing was where they were meant to be seen.
The two stopped just before one of the larger trees, the man seeming to freeze in position, and Gerard trembled a little as he felt Frank guiding him forward, unknowingly closer, because perhaps Gerard just didn't want to know what became of this woman and the man who found himself burying her.
"What's wrong?" Frank asked, noticing the way Gerard seemed to tense up, refusing to move any closer to the man and the woman dead in his arms.
"It's..." Gerard didn't even know what kind of lie he could fill this gap with, simply turning away and pulling Frank into another corner of the clearing. "It's nothing." He said, forcing a smile, and sitting down on the floor with Frank beside him.
"Can you see something?" Frank asked, attempting to follow Gerard's gaze and the glances he kept taking towards the man, but of course, Frank saw nothing in his place.
"It doesn't matter." Gerard shrugged it off, pulling Frank closer into his side, but as he did so, turning away, there was a thud as the man dropped the woman's body onto the ground. Gerard flinched in response to the sound, that again, Frank just couldn't hear.
"Gerard, there's clearly something there-" Frank protested, now getting to his feet and fixating his gaze upon that spot. "Just fucking tell me-"
"It's..." Gerard choked out, shaking his head, "it's not a nice thing, and it's just some people, not important, you don't need to know, you don't need to see."
A shovel appeared in the man's hands and he approached the larger tree, beginning to dig what was undoubtedly a grave for the woman laying on the ground just a couple of feet away.
"I don't fucking care what you think, you can't just keep secrets from me all the time, Gerard, you know, I'd tell you if I could see these things-"
"Frank, it's different, you don't understand, it's different. When you see them first hand you sort of get used to it, but you don't... it's complicated." Gerard shook his head, "it's just, it's just a man, he's there, he's digging a grave-"
"A grave?" Frank exclaimed, "what for? Who for?"
Gerard sighed, "a woman, she tripped back out on your road, cracked her skull open, she's covered in blood, bleeding everywhere, there's blood on his clothes too. He picked her up and took her here; they were in front of us all the time as we walked."
"And why didn't you tell me?"
"You don't need to know the details of every awful thing I've seen." Gerard let out a sigh, pressing a kiss to Frank's forehead, "I think the memory's going to end soon anyway, just when she's in the grave, I think."
Gerard watched as he picked her up before letting her body drop into the relatively shallow grave he'd dug for her. He let out a sigh, pushing the dirt back in over her, before pushing his shovel into the dirt beside her, and with that, fading away.
"He's gone now." Gerard added, "it's all gone now, it's fine, Frank-"
Frank however wasn't listening in the slightest, and was in fact running across to that very spot, and reaching out to touch the shovel, still stuck in the dirt, "I can see that," he said, almost as if he couldn't quite believe it, "the shovel," he turned to Gerard, who followed him over to the spot, biting his lip as he looked between the shovel and Frank, and then found his eyes drifting down to the ground beneath their feet. "Is here, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Gerard nodded, "it is."
"I mean, I was here, this very spot even, so many fucking times as a teenager, and I, I never saw this shovel, this is different, what's going on? Why was it left here?" Frank exclaimed, "it's not like I can dig up a memory."
"Frank," Gerard reached out, putting his hand on his boyfriend's shoulder, "she is, the woman, she is under us right now."
"Fuck-" Frank exclaimed, stepping back from the spot in horror, "how long has she been here? I've stood here, I've fucking stood on a dead woman's grave, I-"
"I don't know, Frank, I really don't." Gerard pulled Frank into him for a hug, holding him close for a moment as he ran the rest of the clearing through his mind, finding perhaps anything else for them to focus upon.
However, every other memory in the clearing appeared as little more than a flicker of light, a snapshot for a second: bright red hair and a cigarette, and a younger boy, smiling up at the redhead like he meant the world, but only for a second, flickering out like static: nothing in comparison to the now very real shovel in the dirt beside them.
It was perhaps only then that Gerard came to realise just how greatly the bad overshadowed the good, and how that rang just as true in all reflections of this world.
"I love you." Gerard uttered into Frank's shoulder, kissing him again, "I love you." He repeated himself, his tone a little louder this time, and as Frank held onto him a little tighter in response, the redhead and the shorter boy seemed to flicker into focus.
And the younger version of Frank looked up at the younger Gerard and smiled, letting out an 'I love you too' that seemed to echo throughout the trees.
"I can see us, right behind you, don't move, though," Gerard whispered into Frank's ear, "this memory is hard to focus on, but it's a nice one. You just told me that you loved me too and I'm standing there looking at you like some pretentious dickwad."
"That sounds about right," Frank muttered, pulling away from Gerard's chest a little, "I wish I could see, this sounds like a nice thing to see, but I guess you get the bad and the good, don't you?"
"The bad always seems to be stronger," Gerard admitted, holding onto Frank's hand as the younger version of himself leaned in for a kiss. "I hate that."
"Do you think that shovel means anything?" Frank asked, holding his breath as he waited for some form of response.
"What do you mean?" Gerard glanced back at the shovel, focusing upon it, and in that moment letting go of the redhead and the eighteen year old. "Fuck, I... the nice memory's fucking gone now, fucking wonderful."
"Hey, Gee, it's fine," Frank let out a sigh, kissing his boyfriend, "We've still got the memories in our heads, haven't we? It's not like it's lost forever."
"Yeah, it's just weird when you have all these memories laid out before you, and it's weird to think that everything you do, if it makes an impact on the world, or someone, other people like me could see it some day." Gerard let out a sigh, holding Frank closer, "I hope someone goes to that house one day, and sees these two people, so fucking in love, a modern day Romeo and Juliet, except one of us has already died, and one of isn't going to die for a long time now."
"Yeah," Frank smiled a little, "you can be Juliet, you'd look so much better in a dress. Gerliet-"
"Stop." Gerard shook his head in disbelief, "Frank Iromeo..." he laughed at that, "I should really just shut the fuck up, shouldn't I?"
"You can do whatever you what, Gerliet-"
"Fucking stop." Gerard let go of Frank's hand, jumping a little at the flicker of light beside the shovel: a silhouette, a figure, a flicker of something else there, but as he approached it, it faded back out into nothing.
"Gee?" Frank asked, following his boyfriend back across the clearing.
"Just thought I saw something, but there's nothing there, of course there's nothing there." He let out a sigh, shaking his head as he brushed his hair away from his face.
"Of course?" Frank raised his eyebrows at that. "You see things all the time, and they're usually there, aren't they? Tell me what you saw."
"Just this figure, just there, beside the tree, just for a moment, I think it really was the light, I mean, when I see memories, I feel something you know, you feel it, but this was kind of different."
"If you say so." Frank shrugged, turning away, "I think we should get out of here, you know? It's... it's just, you know? We should get back to the house-"
"Frank." Gerard exclaimed, pulling his boyfriend back to face the grave, "the figure's there now. For real."
"You wish he could see me too." The figure spoke in the same way, into Gerard's mind like before.
And Gerard focused a little before responding, "can he not hear you? If you speak into his mind too?"
"The living don't have clear minds like we do, but I can try, I'm just not sure he'll hear me."
"Frank?" Gerard held onto his boyfriend's hand, speaking aloud this time, "I need you to trust me for a moment, try and clear and like open up your mind, and focus and listen, but not with your ears with your mind, it's hard to explain, just trust me."
"Gerard, I don't-" Frank was cut off as his eyes widened, a voice seeming to echo, a little distorted around his head, but it was distinctly foreign from his own.
"That was easier than I expected, you really trust each other." The figure now spoke to both their minds, and Frank was still low key freaking the fuck out.
"Gerard, what's-" He spoke aloud only to be cut off.
"I'm the figure, you can't see me, but Gerard wanted to try this." The figure spoke again, "I think you might understand me better anyway, you seemed to get it. He doesn't. You know why the shovel's there."
Frank nodded, reaching for the shovel and glancing at Gerard as he began to shift the dirt.
"Frank?" Gerard exclaimed, reaching out for the smaller man, "you can't just-"
"There's a reason I can see this shovel, don't you think?" Frank continued to shovel the dirt, "I just feel, I just feel something... and I don't know what it is, but I have to do this."
Gerard stepped back, shaking his head and searching for the figure, but to no avail as he watched Frank shift the dirt until the body was visible, in fact, he'd stopped watching, only knowing Frank had found the body as he let out a muffled kind of gaspy scream, and of course, Gerard practically leapt to his side at that point.
Gerard's eyes widened, recognising the body instantly: it bearing the very same face as the figure, who had stood before them, and outside Frank's house, however, he couldn't quite voice this discovery as Frank seem to grab desperately for Gerard's side, his palms sweaty and his voice shaking as he pushed some form of explanation out.
"That's my mum."
And Gerard stood frozen, in astonishment and disbelief as Frank clutched onto his side, sobbing desperately, unable to let it go.
-
lmao i love having a plot because i didn't just pull this out of my ass I've seen this coming for many chapters now and i have been laughing. me writing without plot: laughing in surprise. me writing with a plot: laughing in anticipation. i really should do plot more often tbh
lmao ayy vote and comment if you enjoyed this week's emotional trauma
also u know how i said about the playlist for this fic, well i decided I'm not gonna realise it until the fics over but i shall give you now a song that is literally wintertime af like it h u r t s so u can cry when u listen to it because i love making people cry
safer in the forest/love song for poor michigan by la dispute. tbh actually the whole wildlife album is wintertime af like for real. i love la dispute, la dispute is really great to write to tbh. sleeping with ghosts by placebo (the album as well as the song) is also wintertime af but thats like more focused on the new york bit of this fic, wildlifee is very new jersey.
i really love this fic so much i don't know why i just need to calm down i can't calm down lmao
lov u guys !!!!