We Can Run, Or We Can Die [Frerard]

Eleven|The Truth About The Boyfriend

"Where's Frank?" Bert said, and Gerard's head snapped up. "He said he was going to stay in the car."

"He's not there?" Gerard asked, and Bert rolled his eyes.

"No, that's why I asked where he was."

Gerard immediately rushed off to find the teenager, calling his name in a panicked rush. Ryan sat calmly in the passenger seat of the car, which made Bert think that something had happened between the two, something strange and not quite right. Ray, meanwhile, took off in the other direction, but came back twenty minutes later empty-handed.

There was a sniffling figure shuffling out of the toilets behind the gas station, and Gerard ran up to them, meeting Frank's tear-stained face halfway. His hand was pressed to his arm, and when Gerard grabbed his shoulders, he winced, causing the elder to pull back instantly.

"Frank? What's happened?" Frank shook his head. "Is it your arm?"

"I'm fine." He mumbled, dodging around Gerard. "I just...caught it on something."

"Can I look?" He shook his head once more. "Does it hurt?"

"A little." He admitted, stepping towards the car. "But I'll be fine."

He managed to get away and sit in the back of the car, avoiding everyone else's eyes as Gerard and Bert slipped in either side of him. Ray had volunteered to drive for a while, Psycho Ryan (as Frank had named him) in the passenger seat and glaring at Frank for at least ten minutes before looking away.

Gerard had wrapped his arm around Frank's shoulders, subconsciously or otherwise, and Frank leaned into him, grateful for the comfort and body heat. Bert almost - almost - rolled his eyes. He could see that he needed it more than he needed Ryan's deadly glances.

And the way Frank was holding his arm was anything but normal, Bert had noticed that (even if Gerard hadn't), but he wasn't exactly going to say anything aloud, what with Gerard right beside him.

"So," Bert said, as Ray drove meticulously down the road. "the dead boyfriend."

"Bert!" Gerard hissed, but he was strategically ignored.

Bert McCracken was nothing if not insensitive, hardened after the outbreak, the room he had in his mind for caring dwindling by the day. He had no time for supposedly-suicidal crybabies who took up precious oxygen. All he gave the slightest fuck about was Gerard. And maybe Frank and Ray, seeing as he'd spent the past few days with them. God, he was getting soft again.

Ryan pivoted in his seat, fixing his glare onto Bert. "What about him?"

"Tell us all about him."

His eyes narrowed, but he spoke anyway. "He was twenty when he died. I'd known him all my life. We were the perfect childhood romance. We did everything together - we even came out together. He was tall, almost taller than me, with floppy brown hair and the darkest eyes that were so easy to read. And he got mauled by zombies two and a half years ago." He either didn't notice or ignored Gerard's wince. "I couldn't do anything to save him. I ended up holding his body in my arms after I got rid of the zombies, and I watched him die. It was impossible to get his blood out of my clothes, no matter how many times I washed them."

Everyone was stunned into silence, except Bert, who didn't care for sob stories, unless they involved Gerard. "What was he like? What did he do for a living?"

Frank's face screwed up, noticed only by Gerard, who said nothing. If this boyfriend was the guy he'd taken his knife from, he didn't want to hear his life story. He felt bad enough as it was.