November 1st (Frerard)

24: Wednesday, October 24th

To say that Gerard was nervous would be an understatement.

A severe one at that.

Gerard was the epitome of nerves, the messiah of overthinking, the emperor of self-destruction, and indeed, the architect of his own demise.

That was how it would always be, his last few days upon Earth were no exception.

Certainly no exception.

It was Wednesday. Wednesday the twenty forth of October.

All there was left of October was a week.

All there was left of him was just that: a week.

October and him were connected: the autumn, the cold, the nothingness, the transition from warm to cold, the way you lose yourself in the world, in thoughts, in work, in complications, in boys with smiles who care, and on the mission to destroy yourself.

Gerard would say easily that he was worlds away from the person he was on October first, and that there was very little he could do about that; the certainty of it all had changed him - he'd put his trust, he'd held hands with his suicide date, because it brought him great calm and reassurance in the mere existence of its overbearing presence.

But Gerard knew like he knew anything that he felt secure, he felt safe, he felt at home in its shadow. The sun shone too bright as he stood out alone: his skin was pale, thin-skinned, lightheaded, heavy hearted kind of boy with too many words and a desire for silence, and the ability to rot away in his own head in solace for hours upon end.

He felt safe, he felt ready, he felt worlds away from Friday the thirteenth of October and waking up in a bath tub and regretting it all. This wasn't like that at all. That had been indeed a mistake: a stumble before he reached the cliff face: nothing compared to the fall, and when greeting the depths at the bottom, he'd greet them with an embrace.

Because perhaps the one thing Gerard wasn't scared of, was this - the end of it all, as he'd planned, because he'd had a lifetime of overthinking and planning and drafting, and he fucking knew it all down to every detail - his death as the palm of his own hand, and his mind drifting away from him on the tide, because here he was, the bathtub, letting his skin dissolve around him: water cold, once warm perhaps two hours ago.

Five in the morning.

And he'd lost his head at four.

He was getting worse, but he wasn't concerned.

It was every night now, he'd find himself sat somewhere at two, and then perhaps blinking and seeing that it was four. Several hours lost like that with no recollection, but not to sleep, because he would be sat upright, still, unmoving, conscious, and even tired, as they were hours simply lost to himself: hours for the ravenous kind of dark thoughts in the deepest corners of his mind to dart out and devour.

It left him a little distrusting of himself, but it wasn't something he fussed over, as he was sure that he'd never once done anything besides sit in silence and thought in the hours he'd missed, and anyway, it wasn't like he could ruin his life much more than a little more than he already had in a week.

Because that was all he had left now - in a week, everything was going to be alright, and Frank would be smiling - it would be his birthday and Gerard would be perhaps sat with him in his bedroom like he had been before, and Gerard would be silent: thinking of Frank and the beauty in him, and the water and drowning and the tenfold beauty in that.

And he'd never get to apologise properly, as words refused to form correctly and ink smudged and his thought ran like a deer: startled, wide eyed and nimble, never allowing him to quite catch up, to quite understand, as he would stumble after it in hope of understanding, in hope of fitting it all together, but never doing so.