Turn Off The Dark (Frerard)

Part Twenty-One

-Frank's POV-

Gerard developed a habit of staring at me, but I strangely didn't mind. I took a weird sort of pleasure in catching his eyes on me, watching him scuttle around getting things for me that I didn't necessarily even need. He obviously felt awful about the whole 'attempting to kill me' thing, and if it would put his conscience at rest to play nurse, I wasn't objecting.

When my face healed, and my bruises were fading, it was time for me to get back to my night watch job. I sort of missed the silence of just sitting at the desk. The first place I ever saw Gerard.

Fuck. My thoughts seemed to always make their way back to him.

----

When I went downstairs at roughly eleven at night, someone was sitting at the front desk. A familiar, friendly face from school. Well, a familiar head full of bushy, curly hair. Spinning in the chair, a huge smile came over his kind features as he stood up.

"Hey Frank! I heard you were in the hospital man, good to see you up!"

"Toro? What the hell are you doing here?"

Ray Toro shrugged. "I live a couple houses down, I was just filling in till you got back."

"Oh. Well thanks" I said, and I meant it. Ray was always nice to me. We were never super close friends or anything, and now I was wondering why. A music man himself, he had always been super kind and would do anything for me had I asked despite our only being acquaintances. It seemed it was just his nature to be so friendly.

"No problem. So you rooming with that kid? Gerard?"

I gave him a quizzical look, leading him to explain.

"Oh, my older brother is friends with Mikey. I know all about him."

I nodded in comprehension and took the desk chair. "I'm kind of crazy about him."

Ray drummed on the desk with both hands. "Well go for it then, dude. That simple. Let me know how it goes for you though, I gotta get home."

"Ah, okay. See ya, Toro" I said, and Ray left.

Was it that simple, really?

Gerard was all I thought about..

I made a plan in my head. Rehearsed what I would say over and over and over again in my head, deemed it stupid, came up with new lines and repeated the process.

This needed to happen.

In the morning, it would.