Local Boy in the Photograph (Frerard Oneshot)

Local Boy in the Photograph

Years go by, and it doesn't get any easier. The pain doesn't lessen. If anything, it only gets worse, as memories get old, and you begin to forget.

--

It was that time again, the one Gerard hated most. The whole year lead around to it; it was his new New Year, only it was a day filled with pain and regret rather than the joy and happiness that comes with New Year. However, it was filled with all of the same false hopes and promises. It was a day full of tears, for all different reasons, and a day full of forced smiles and small talk between distant relatives who only bothered to speak to each other on that day out of respect.

It was the fifth anniversary of the accident. Gerard was twenty eight, he should be happily married, living in his own home, with a stable job. Somehow, he managed to secure a shabby ground floor one bedroom apartment, probably something to do with the fact that an old friend of Frank's owned the building. That was about the only good thing in his life, and even that wasn't all that great. He spent most nights sitting in bars, talking to whoever was there. He had made an attempt at living a normal life, but he couldn't quite handle it; could you, if you saw what he had, happen to the person you love the most?

The headlines were all the same: 'Tragic Death Of Twenty-Three Year Old Frank Iero', along with a smiling picture of the man who died, all over the front of the local newspapers for around a month after it happened. Gerard was living on the floor in Frank's parent's front room, due to the guest rooms being taken up by immediate family. Gerard didn't want to leave them, and they didn't want Gerard to leave.

When the constant visitors got too much for him, he would go for a walk. Sometimes he'd venture in to town, and go to a crappy coffee shop down a side street and sit for an hour or two with his headphones in, blocking out the world. Other times, he'd go to the park, and sit on the bench where they had had their first conversation, after Frank's dog had peed on Gerard's shoes. They were nineteen then, and didn't have a care in the world. Frank was an aspiring guitarist, and Gerard an artist. They had a lot in common. It was like they were made for each other.

Wherever Gerard went, he would see the headlines in the shop windows. He would try to ignore the stares people gave as he walked past. He didn't eat, he didn't sleep, he didn't bother showering or changing his clothes, there was no point. There was no point in living when Frank couldn't any more. He tried not to listen to the people whispering around him, about the 'terrible accident'. It was no accident, Gerard knew that for certain. He had seen the mangled body, and he had found the hastily scrawled note. It was no accident. It was suicide.

His therapist told him it was depression; Gerard didn't believe him. He wasn't depressed, because that implied he had a problem. He didn't have a problem, or an illness, he was grieving. He had lost the one man he truly loved, and had to live with the guilt of knowing that, technically, he could have stopped it.

Gerard drank to forget. He didn't want to remember the way Frank's body lay across the tracks, the twenty three year old sprawled out and bloody, flattened by the train. Allegedly, the people on the platform tried to stop him from jumping in front of it, but it was no use, because this was what Frank wanted, and Gerard hated that Frank had been so unhappy, and he didn't do anything about it, not because he didn't want to, or couldn't be bothered- purely because he couldn't. Frank never told him just how unhappy he truly was.

"Gerard? Do you know train times for Monday? I was going to go to New York, have a lads day with a few old friends." This was not an uncommon thing for Frank to do; he had a much wider social circle than Gerard, and often left states for a few days at a time. Sometimes Gerard would be invited to, other times not. It didn't bother him when he wasn't. He trusted Frank not to go off and have any one night stands, but if he did, that was his choice, and not Gerard's. Gerard just hoped that Frank didn't betray his trust, and up until now, he was yet to be unfaithful.