Phobia | Frerard

Thantophobia

Thantophobia

Noun

The fear of dying.

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Two weeks later.

The only sound in the kitchen was the TV, just as every other day in Frank's home. Nothing particularly different caught his attention as the news continued on as he poked at his eggs and toast as if it were poison. At this point, Frank wouldn't have doubted if his food was poisoned, Linda was acting way too weird for his liking.

Fabiana was the same way. Both her and her mother were unnaturally nice to Frank, catering to his every need, telling him that they enjoyed his presence. But just because Frank's hair was half red now, (although he was still hiding it very well) didn't mean he still wasn't smart. He could see through everything his family was doing. The fake smiles, the compliments that probably left a taste of metal on their tongues after spoken. It was all too fishy to be genuine, and for it to be going on for two weeks straight was already a huge red flag.

Frank's father hadn't shown up at home for the time being as well, same went for Gerard and pretty much all the children who had parents that were in the government. Frank could only have imagined what kind of fucked up things they were brewing in the depths of their offices, maybe ways to kill or ways to discriminate, it seemed as if the whole living section was going to shit.

The past two weeks had been so strange. Gerard and Frank still saw each other everyday like a routine. Frank came home from school, either ran off into a meadow with Gerard or into the Way's house where he pretended to hang out with Mikey, but it was usually the first choice. They savored their alone time together, hugging, kissing, holding, the whole ordeal until the sun was finally sent and their curfew was brought on them. It felt off though, not their affection, but their time. They weren't worried about losing each other, Gerard even made that clear, it just felt like they were running out of time for things to be normal. For things to be just how they were.

Mikey was picking up on it too. He tried to spend as much time as possible with his brother and ate lunch with Frank every single day. Mikey wasn't exactly sure why he was afraid that Frank was going to leave, he figured the only reason Frank would leave is if Donald found out about his secret friendship.

Frank tried not to think about it too much and pushed his thoughts aside as he started to slowly eat the breakfast that was in front of him. He could feel Fabiana's eyes on him as he shoved his scrambled eggs into his mouth, less interested in her own food. She wasn't even glaring this time as usual, she was just looking at him with the most unreadable expression on her face. Frank couldn't possibly know what she was looking at, his hair was disguised, the bags under his eyes were dulling, nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Did I grow an extra head or something?" Frank mumbled, slamming his fork onto his plate with a loud and sharp sound.

Fabiana didn't say anything at first and bit at her thumb nail, "Not a head, but something else."

Frank's body froze up. "Can we not talk about this now."

"Why can't we?"

"I'd rather not talk about how I'm a screw up when our mother isn't even a room away." Frank snapped. It couldn't have been a worse time for Fabiana to dig his secrets up from where he buried them so deeply, he wasn't going to let his mother hear this and he wasn't going to let Fabiana tear down everything he had built up.