TRIGGER WARNING: If talk of MCR in the past tense wrecks your brain, stop reading now because the rest of the story is built on that
"I was twenty, and I hadn't met your mother yet. The only job to my name was as a guitarist...I was in a band called My Chemical Romance, with me and a couple of other guys, including Ray."
My eyes got wide. "Ray was in your band?"
Dad nodded. "Yes. It was me, Ray, and some of our other friends, Bob and Mikey. At the time, I was the lead singer, but I was much better with the guitar, and I wanted to focus on it for the time being.
"Mikey came up to us all one day at one of our practices and said, 'Hey, can my brother try singing?' I didn't have anything against it, and neither did the other guys, so we let him give it a go."
"It was him, wasn't it?"
Dad nodded, softer. "I swear, he had the voice of an angel." My father's eyes became clouded with memories. "I loved him from the moment I first heard his voice.
"He became our new lead singer, and we got some gigs. We did better than before; we weren't world-famous or anything, but the people in town all knew us well, and we made enough money to get by.
"One day, he kissed me onstage. I didn't know why, it just happened. I was completely caught off guard. After the show, he asked if I wanted to stay behind at the bar to maybe get a drink. We each had a beer...I asked him if he wanted to go out sometime, and he said yes. (A/N: I almost wrote "the bard" instead of "the bar". Sorry, Shakespeare, but there's no room for you in a Frerard fic.)
"A couple of weeks later, we told our band members about our relationship. They were a little worried that we'd destroy the band if we broke up or something, but we promised to keep playing music together no matter what."
I realized my father was crying.
"A few years went by, and I knew he loved me, too. I was..." he swallowed back a sob, but refused to wipe away the tears on his face, like he didn't even know they were there. "I was going to ask him to marry me."
I sat there without a towrd, stunned, as my father went on.
"That was when we found out...he had lung cancer, from smoking all those cigarettes. He went through round after round of chemotherapy, and lots of medicine. It was horrible to see him suffering... We did what we could, but we just found out about it too late..." He stopped crying and just stared at the photo, not looking at me.
"He died."
A/N: Are you crying yet cause I cried while writing this
