Summertime (Frerard)

51: And With Madness, It's Love That's Sad

"You're dead." I told him, after moments of dumbstruck silence, watching as the man I'd grown to hate invited himself inside and sat down in the living room of the empty house, and really, my head was exploding right now, because there was something far more fucked up about this that I just couldn't quite place.

"Evidently, I'm not." He sighed, meeting my gaze as he made himself comfortable in the chair, almost as if he was annoyed with the fact that he had been shot in the fucking head, and fucking killed. What the fuck, seriously? "Is Gerard in-"

"No, you're fucking dead, Bert McCracken, so what the fuck is going on here? What the fuck? Gerard told me that you were dead, dead. He shot you and then we ran away and I freaked out over this and even Mikey knows it and you're dead, so what the fuck is this?" My words came to a slow as everything fell over me like tidal waves in quick succession of memories: both familiar and repressed, and phone calls and text messages, both answered and ignored.

"Frank, I'm not dead, and I'm sorry.. I-I... came here to say sorry. I want to say sorry to Gerard, but he's not here is he? I've been trying to get in contact with him on his phone for weeks now, but he just won't, so I guess I have to set things straight face to face. I am really sorry, Frank, look I know you hate me for things I did in the past, but I wasn't mentally stable and the drugs didn't help at all, I-"

"The phone calls, fuck... that was you, and oh my god, you're alive- how the fuck are you not dead?" I threw myself back into the sofa, pulling my cellphone out like my life depended on it, dialling Gerard's number, only for my efforts to be returned with nothing more than a few brief seconds of dial tones before it went straight to voicemail. "Gerard killed you, when you came up to his room and... he killed you, he shot... there were gunshots... I..."

"I never came up to his room, Frank, I... I hate to break it to you, and I know you won't want to believe me, but I'm very much alive, and Gerard is far much more of a liar than the average person." And his words weighed heavy like bullet wounds in my own chest, but it soon came to mind how I'd never seen the body or any real evidence of anything: Gerard had just picked up my passed out body and run away with it, and I'd simply taken what little snippets of explanation I could get out of him as the truth.

Needless to say, love is blind.

But fuck, why? Why would he do this? What the fuck?

"But why? Why would he pretend to kill you and then run away with me for like a week or so until I could convince him to come back and then still people played along with your death, and what? What the fuck is going on, Bert?" I screamed at him, and really maybe, I did start to believe that he'd simply come here to apologise to an ex-boyfriend that he'd been a shitty person to, and had his apparent death dropped on him like a bombshell instead.

"Like anyone has the slightest fucking clue as to what's going on in Gerard's head, even half the time. It must be both a dream and a death wish to think like him." Bert stood up from his chair, peering out the front window, before turning back to me. "He's the kind of mad were it's all passion, all feeling, all emotion, and all without reason. Where is he now?"

"I... don't know..." I stuttered out, almost like I knew that my answer was already acceptable by no degree.

"Fuck, what the fuck do you mean that you don't know? Seriously who put the idea of leaving someone like him alone for longer than ten minutes into your heads?"

"He told me that you used to never let him go and hold him tight to your side and shit..."

"Well do you fucking wonder why, Frank? Look, he's worse when he's actively taking drugs and shit as well, like ten fucking times worse, and he says he's better, but he's not, and really, you just can't tell if he's lying to himself or just you, anymore. We need to fucking find him, though, fuck, he'll do something stupid, I-"