The World Is Ugly (But You're Beautiful to Me) | Completed

Chapter 3

"Frankie," Diana whined loudly and looked at her older brother in annoyance. Frank just laughed mischievously and ignored her.

"Frankie, please please please ," Diana now started saying and tried to snatch the remote from her brother's hands.

Frank sighed now and knew he couldn't ignore her longer, "D, I'm not letting you. You're too young." He said much more seriously. Sometimes the lines between parent and sibling blurred so much that he almost forgot how to deal with Diana. He supposed now was the time to stop being the older brother and start the role of the parent.

Diana pouted and crossed her arms over her chest, Frank almost recognized the way she acted when she's mad as the way he did, but he ignored that. If it was a different situation, he might have acted differently, he knew, but it wasn't, he couldn't soften.

A minute passed before Diana seemed to finally realize that Frank wasn't about to change his mind and stormed out of his room angrily. She even slammed the door behind her for effect, causing Frank to flinch. He couldn't wait for her to become a teenager now.

Frank sighed, a few minutes earlier, he found Diana going through his DVDs collection, which mostly consisted of horror movies. Frank had told her not to go through them alone before. He tried to joke about it and put one of her Disney movies in the player instead, but she just started begging him and he knew then he had to stop playing the big brother role and enter the parent role. As expected, Diana didn't accept that very well.

After a few minutes of staring at the device in front of him playing some Disney movie Diana used to love just a few weeks before, he finally gave up on the fact that she might come back and turned the thing off. He rubbed his face with his hands. Diana had never acted that way towards him before, she was usually very grown up for her age and accepted Frank's explanations well, but Frank supposed everything had its limits. Diana was still an eight year old, he sometimes had to remind himself. Sometimes he just had to use the old parents 'because I said so' excuse. Even if he didn't like it.

It was their first weekend at Gerard's, and Frank supposed having to tell Diana that every room other than theirs in the place was off limits seemed to upset her. She told Frank earlier that week that she couldn't wait for the weekend to explore the 'castle' better, and  Frank remembered how her face fell when he told her that that wasn't possible. He knew it was harsh of him, but their living there didn't change the fact that it wasn't their home. It was true that Gerard didn't give him a set of rules to the place, but Frank decided not to test them anyway. Besides, God knows where Diana could get herself, she was a very curious child and it was more for her safety than anything else.

Speaking of Gerard, Frank hasn't seen him all day. It had nothing to do with his deciding not to venture into the house, but more with Gerard being in his studio all day. Yeah, the guy worked even on weekends. Frank had thought his job would extend to the weekend at first too, but Gerard hadn't made any indication towards that, so Frank didn't ask.

To tell the truth, with the exception of Gerard's weird work mannerism, Frank found himself if not enjoying his job (come on, who would really enjoy replying to emails and answering angry journalists on the phone all day?), at least enjoying the fact that he managed to do it well. He did everything Gerard asked from him and did everything that he was meant to do. It was the first time in his life that he actually felt like something depended completely on him and he couldn't be prouder that he managed to live up to that. He sometimes tried to imagine how his sixteen or seventeen-year-old self would react to that, that boy would have never been able to do it. He was too busy throwing himself every night into mosh pits and drinking himself into a coma with his 'friends' behind his parents back. Frank knew he had to pay a very high price for all that to change. In a way, it felt like everything that happened had saved his life in the end. He still enjoyed his music and the occasional concert here and there, but now he knew he couldn't get himself into something too reckless because it wasn't just him who would hurt now, but someone else who'd lose everything if he did.