Disenchanted (Frerard + Petekey)

The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You

He'd decided,
It was time.
Time to try again.

The horribly uncomfortable visit with his family the night before had left Gerard with a new resolve, he needed to get better. He needed to get out of here, for Mikey's sake. And his mom's. Clearly things at home were falling apart. He suspected it had something to do with his father having lost his usual punching bag. Without Gerard around to take the hits, both physically and metaphorically, the target must've fallen onto Mikey. It was evident his mom was at least trying to keep his father in check, something she'd never done on Gerard's behalf, but he was glad to see her trying to protect her younger son.
It was clear however, even from that small interaction the night before, that things weren't going well.

I need to get out of here.

"What good are you gonna do?"
"Such a useless weakling anyway..."
"How could you think..."
"What would you even..."
"...fucking nutcase."

I don't give a fuck what you think, I need to get out of here. I need to get back to Mikey. He's too little for this...

"He's not as little as you think." The friendly female voice floated in over his shoulder, "He's off to high school in the fall. You were his age when you—"

"When you tried to kill yourself! Hahaaa! Loser." One of the hateful background voices cut through, overly proud of itself.
Gerard rolled his eyes but couldn't help the slight smile the popped through as he huffed a laugh. The comedic timing was there. This voice reminded him of Frank in the moment, it seemed like his type of joke.

Yeah but we don't want Mikey to be me. We don't want him suicidal...

"Or getting beat up."
"Or going crazy."
"Or doing drugs."
"Or doing Bert."

The thought made him shiver. Gerard knew all too well that he'd lucked out with meeting Bert and not some other 20-something nutcase keen on corrupting a young teen. Sure the guy had his issues, and Gerard knew in his logical brain that he really shouldn't be running off with some greasy guy statutorily too old for him for temporary comfort and escape.
That wasn't a problem anymore, but in the beginning,.. still he knew he'd gotten off easy. He'd met a thousand other friendly neighbourhood drug dealers in the past few years, and he really did get off easy being picked up by Bert rather than one of them. And Mikey didn't have him around to make those safer connections.

Gah! Fuck off!
Come on, we've gotta be normal...
What do normal people do?

"...normal people don't end up in the loony bin."
"Normal people don't talk to themselves."
"Normal people don't have imaginary friends."
"Normal people don't—"

I didn't ask what they don't do, I asked what they do do.
How do I be normal?

He glanced around the dayroom. It was lively and sunny, with most people being up and about by now. It had been calm and silent when he'd slunk in, making a beeline for the round table in the corner he was becoming a regular fixture at. He'd been deep in thought, well, conversation really, with the other occupants of his head ever since.
It had to be mid-morning now. The sunlight streaming through the big windows was slowly creeping across his table, having engulfed the sofa along the way. He stretched out the fingers of his damaged hand to touch the edges of its rays, suprised he could feel a little bit of warmth.

Huh, maybe they're not gonna fall off after all.

He wiggled his fingertips with all his might. Restricted by the half-cast and tight wrapping that still snaked its way up to his elbows, it came off as a mere twitching of the very ends of his exposed fingers. He had to concentrate on the sensation in order to feel any heat from the sun, but it was there... wasn't it?