Never Coming Home // Frerard

Chapter 1

I've always loved the snow in New Jersey. It always looked so fresh and clean, laying upon the grounds of a state riddled with murder, rape, abuse and drugs. The fact that something so pure could make even a place like this look beautiful said so much to me.

Mikey hates the snow. He refuses to go outside when it's like this. He stays inside the house all the time, playing bass and drinking coffee. Even if I bribe him, saying I'll take him to Starbucks or the comic book store with me, he still just shakes his head and claims it's too cold for any human being to function.

I decided to go get my sketchbook from the house to draw this scene below me, so I slid off the ledge of our roof and onto the ladder that leads me to the ground, making fresh shoe prints in the crisp, white snow that crunched under my feet.

I followed the trails of indentions I'd made on my way out of the house, entering the light brown door again.The warm air that instantly warmed my slightly red nose tells me Mikey turned the heat up, indicating he came downstairs from his room. Sure enough, I smelled a whisp of black coffee.

"Hey, Gee," He smiled when I rounded into the kitchen, grabbing a mug from the cabinet above my head and pouring myself a cup of the warm, dark brown drink.

"Hey Mikes," I ruffled his light brown hair.

"You finally get tired of the snow?" He asked me.

"Not a chance, little bro. I just came in to grab my sketchpad," I walked out of the kitchen, making my way to the stairs that lead down into the basement. I liked the fact that my room was down here. It was nice to feel a slight disconnection from the rest of the word above my head, even if it was just by retreating to my bedroom covered in band posters and empty coffee mugs.

I slid out the top drawer in my desk, smiling when I saw the large sketchpad with my name scrawled across it in cursive. My grandma always got me sketchbooks for my birthday because she knew I always needed them. She always did her own thing to make them look a little more original. One year she covered the front and back of the book in smooth black velvet, and then there was another time when she splattered red paint on the cover to make it look like it had blood stains on it.

I reached for a pencil from the top of my desk and then went back upstairs, going straight from the top of the staircase to the front door.

"Later, Gee!" Mikey called from the living room, where he was currently watching The Blair Witch Project and drinking his cup of coffee.

"Later, Mikey!" I called back before I pulled the front door closed, retreating back to the roof of the small house I'd spent the last few years of my life in.

After looking around for the perfect scenery to draw, I notice the tree that stands tall in front of our brick home. The branches had lost all of their leaves except for one, which looked to be ready to fall at any second. There was snow resting on top of the light brown branches, making it look beautiful and perfect to draw, so I flipped to the next clean, white page of my book and started drawing.

-

I heard the sound of boots touching the metal bars of the ladder, making their way up to the roof I was still resting on, now laying back, watching the white flakes of snow fall to the nearest surface to catch them.

Mom wasn't home from work yet, so it had to be Mikey, which confused me because he hadn't left the house in a week, since the schools shut down due to the weather.

"Hey... Gerard?" He asked nervously. I could tell something was immediately off with the way he was talking. I sat up from the cold roof and pulled my knees up to my chest.

"What's wrong?" I asked cautiously. This wasn't going to be good news, whatever it was.

"I, uh, got a call... just now." He mumbled, fiddling with the seems at the bottom of his Batman t-shirt.

"From who?"

"From, uh, Lindsey's mom."

Mikey instantly caught my attention, and I lifted my head from where they were resting on top of my knees. "What... what did she say?"

"Lindsey's... she's in the hospital, Gerard. She got jumped by a few students on the way home from school and they stabbed her and carved 'emo' into her stomach... she's in pretty bad shape."

It instantly felt hard to breathe. It felt hard to move, to stand, to do anything. But I forced myself to move, to slide onto the ladder and make my way down to the ground, to grab my car keys and my trench coat and set off to go to the hospital.

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Guys. Guys. Guys. New story.

Tbh i don't know why I haven't done a Frerard story before because it's my OTP but I'm finally doing one and I'm very excited about it :3

~XoChase