Anatomy Of A Fall |Frerard

Chapter 3

Mikey slept pretty much the entire time Gerard was there, but Gerard was still glad he made it, glad he got to say hello and crawl on the bed with his brother and draw him some of the ruined houses and a zombie unicorn. Mikey asked about his date with Frank at one point, though, his voice hoarse but dryly amused.

"It wasn't a date!" Gerard protested, and Mikey just grinned and raised an eyebrow, so Gerard had to mock-rant for about a year about how it wasn't a fucking date, it was just a hike, who went on a date in the woods, anyway? And at some point during his well-thought out argument, Mikey fell asleep. Typical. Gerard left the sketches on Mikey's pillow and let the nurse hustle him out into the hall, where he blinked unhappily in the florescent lights and stared at Mikey's door. Room 402, Mikey Way. There was a chart of gibberish and shorthand and numbers that all added up to mean Mikey wasn't coming home, not yet.

In the car on the way back, settling in for the hour-long drive, his mother tried to strike up a conversation about school, but her mind was obviously on other things, and Gerard didn't really want to talk about it anyway. He managed to glare her into submission and then cranked up the CD player, staring at his feet and zoning out on Metallica until they got home.

It was only much, much later, lying in bed after a late dinner, clutching half a bottle of bourbon to his chest and replaying the confrontation at lunch over in his head, recasting Ted and Isaac as werewolf lepers and himself as a badass priest with a fucking holy shotgun, that another thought struck him.

He still hadn't retrieved his bookbag from the dumpster. Fuck. Now it was 1:48 AM and he'd spent the last hour drinking and staring at the unmoving ceiling. He really wasn't in the state for, say, like, dumpster-diving. Or walking.

Fuck, if he'd gotten Frank's number he could have called him, found out where Frank was and made him help.

Of course, he'd probably have used the phone to say something completely moronic, so maybe it was for the best. But he was going to have to go out there, in the dark and cold and creepy tiny town-ness, and having Frank there would have gone a long way towards making Gerard not completely hate his life.

But even Frankless, he had to go. His copy of the fifth Doom Patrol was in that bag, along with his charcoals and his sketch pad—his good sketch pad. If he waited any longer, the bag and all its contents would probably be lost to humanity under a heap of rancid cafeteria lunch.

He finally made himself stagger out of bed, and as soon as he was upright, the room spun hazily, all Dadaist and nonsensical. He clung to the bedpost for a while, waiting for his vision to normalize. Probably he wouldn't throw up. The bottle of Maker's Mark was still clutched loosely in his left hand, and he figured what the hell, take it with him. Liquid comfort, right? The wind was blowing pretty hard, and he could hear the zombie tree hands scrabbling frantically at the window – the booze would keep him warm, and the bottle was almost empty anyway. He could be efficient and finish it off on the way to the dumpster, chuck it when he was done.

The house was at it again, making creepy noises. It was even worse now that the wind had joined in, mumbling and groaning. "Old houses settle, Gerard," his mom had told him wearily when he complained, but the house sounded pretty fucking unsettled to him. Each board on the staircase protested loudly in a different key of moan when he stepped on it, which got sort of exciting when he slid down the last couple stairs.

Outside, the town was dead. There were a few widely spaced lampposts that created small islands of light, but they did more to emphasize the surrounding darkness than anything else. It felt like October now, all the warmth of the day gone, air chill and clear, with a few dead leaves dancing about his feet, and all the houses were staring at him with empty glassy eyes, all dark and waiting.